"Once I heard this phrase somewhere and without knowing it, I already knew what it meant. I thought of artist Neals Niat's Mapanes Love series and lost myself in his use of pastel colours, banana trees, and words that are so familiar to me that they sound as if someone who knows me well is whispering them in my ear. I had created my own mapane.”

Mapane(s): n. m. 1. Crossroads, divided paths. 2. deuxième bureau, hideout. 3. Popular neighbourhoods.

Agnes Essonti Luque's first solo exhibition in l'Hospitalet de Llobregat offers an intimate space for debate stemming from her ongoing research into the concepts of identity, representation, and belonging. Her work connects us and yet at the same time brings us to a reality which centres on the body and self-representation.

Agnes' installation is an identity puzzle that creates a reflective scenario through which we approach ideas of home, refuge and, in Camfranglais, "mapane" (or hiding place). Here she can be herself, escape from reality and imposed rhythms by taking refuge in her own body. The feeling of being at home but without a physical space. In this way, Agnes speaks of the utopian, of a place where the narrative is not the hegemonic one but one where the black woman is situated at the centre.

"Identities are complex and never stagnant, they always flow. Over the years I have found it complicated to feel I belong to one place, I am neither from here nor there; neither from Cameroon, nor Spanish, nor Catalan, nor from Cordoba, nor from Limbe. Everyday that passes, it becomes clearer to me that I am from my mother and my father, my aunt and my grandmother. I am from the smell brought by the suitcases arriving from Douala: bobolo, dried fish and ndjangsang...I am from Lapiro de Mbanga. I am of oxtail and prawn omelettes. I'm from the sunset in summer. Of laughing around a table. Of crying in my room.”

For this project, Agnes has chosen to work with images, texts and objects charged with symbolism, thereby immersing us in a sensitive ritual that delves into her memory and at the same time draws on history to deconstruct the narrative of identity.

https://www.tangent-projects.com/project-28-agnes-essonti-luque