D. Denenge Duyst-Akpem, 1 year, 7 months, 9 days, 7 hours, 1 minute, 34 seconds, 2025

D. Denenge Duyst-Akpem's practice reflects an ongoing engagement with site, body, visibility, identity, and the politics of Black women's labor in institutional spaces, expressed through photography, clothing, synesthetic sculpture, digital experimentation, sound intervention, and interactive performance with the audience. Her projects consider the poetics of trace within the framework of Pastoral Brutalism, tracing a sensual scholarly engagement with architectures and natural environments as a return to the adoption of haptics, the role of metamorphosis, modes of protection, fantastical excavation, and expanded forms of memory.

D. Denenge Duyst-Akpem (born in Nigeria) is a transnational “sculptor of space” whose art and research bridges ritual performance, design, text, and Afrofuturism. Her Pastoral Brutalism series implements decolonial approaches to trace, site, body, and Black women's labor.

She presents “1 year, 7 months, 9 days, 7 hours, 1 minute, 34 seconds,” an activation whose title represents the time elapsed between the original, private “Rope Beating Drawing” of 2022 at La Becque Art Residency in La Tour-de-Peilz and the beginning of this new public work at CALM – Centre d'Art La Meute in Lausanne on Friday, May 24 at 7:15 p.m.

This new work completes the cycle of creation, liberation, damage, and restoration, presenting an expanded vision of what constitutes a long-term performance. The artist offers an interactive presentation with the audience, featuring texts and materials historically used in her practice, such as charcoal and local components from the healing garden of her friend and colleague, with post-performance bodywork as a reclamation of the body as a site of transformation for Black women who need holistic care within the institutional complex of art.