‘The world to come’ – the work of Ntiense Eno Amooquaye

Simon Jarrett attended the launch of a new book by a striking new poet and artist whose work challenges and pulsates with energy

It is hard to pin down the work of Ntiense Eno Amooquaye. She is an artist, an illustrator, a poet, a performer and a commentator. Yet all of this does not quite describe the unique fusion that she achieves when she creates her work. As the title of her first published work – Artist Audio Recorder – suggests, she cannot be pinned down easily.

Mesmerising

Her book was launched in November 2014 at the end of an exhibition at the prestigious Saison Poetry Library at London’s Royal Festival Hall. It features illustrated poems and photographs of her working process, which become part of her finished work. Much of her poetry and art draws on the sights and sounds of her home city of London, and presents a mesmerising vision of a pulsating city, life emanating from its bricks, its signs and its people. A Tube station is infused with the words:

Zone is the underground

And the world to come

Passion, text and writing

The poems are not illustrated in the sense that she writes a poem and then illustrates it – the poetry and the illustration are fused together as one piece, inseparable. It is a remarkable format. As Chris McCabe, the poetry librarian at the Saison Library has written:  ‘There are few artists that can create genuinely beautiful work that also embodies , and foregrounds, their working processes… we are fortunate that there are some artists who bring us into their world of creation and allow us to see how they arrived at their end point. Ntiense Eno Amooquaye is one of those artists.’

Recorder

The author has come through the ranks of Intoart, who work with and develop talented artists who have learning disabilities. Supported by an Arts Council grant she spent a year researching in the Saison Library, following words that intrigued her into the canon of work that is held there, drawing inspiration from poets who had gone before her to create her own body of work. Part of her approach was to make an actual physical link, creating hand-painted bookmarks which were placed in the original work and invited readers who came across them to respond to what she had done. Her originality is remarkable and the key to it is in her unique take on that word ‘recorder’ that appears in her title. This is how she defines herself. As  Chris McCabe says:  ‘Ntiense Eno Amooquaye is the recorder, making connections between what is seen and read, and documenting them in stages across various media. If London ever ceased to be, the people of the future could access the archive of this artist to gain a sense of what life in the metropolis was like in 2014.’

 

Her poetry is about life, contact, connections. The actions of the everyday make a connected world, in which humans are powered by each other’s warmth and energy:  noisy, messy and very much alive:

Curled hair to

Straighten and perm

Lights to switch on

And off when it is

Dark

Approaching of

Somebody who wants

To get close to you

A tremendous debut from a poet/artist from whom we will hear much more.

Ntiense Eno Amooquaye’s book, Artist Audio Recorder can be ordered via the Intoart website:  http://www.intoart.org.uk/studio/weblogs/Exhibitions/blog.html