Coumba Samba at Arcadia Missa

Artist: Coumba Samba

Exhibition title: Red Gas

Venue: Arcadia Missa, London, UK

Date: September 7 – October 25, 2024

Photography: Tom Carter / Courtesy of the Artist and Arcadia Missa, London

We are proud to present Coumba Samba’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. Samba’s work comprises color and material to reflect the contemporary capitalist reality of trade, access and opportunity. She investigates the uneasy relationships between the durable and the temporary by frequently working with found objects and bold colors, referencing moments from her own life. Red Gas is looking into gas as one of the most widely traded commodities, shaping international politics and economy. With the sanctions on Russia, the West is looking for alternatives. Thinking about the industrialized use of natural resources and the dispossession that has come with it. Samba’s Red Gas is interested in this moment and what it exposes.

The room is filled with painted radiators, each a different color, carrying its own reference and agenda. Playing with the objecthood of the artwork on one hand and the politicization of colors on the other. When looking at works within the room, they could be reduced to pieces of metal covered in paint, minimalist and empty. Within replicating the aesthetic, there is a resistance; minimalism and the history of modern art in general lends from the rest and reduces it to whiteness.

As said in the booklet accompanying the exhibition:

The history of transnationalism is about flows. Yet the term is almost always used as a metaphor relating to the movement of ideas or influence. More literally, we are looking at the flow of gas between the USSR and Europe. Like an umbilical cord that ties Russia to Europe, it is also a flow of history, violence, war, capital.

-Mischa Lustin

Coumba Samba’s recent solo exhibitions include Capital, Cell Project Space, London, UK (2024); This is Money, Drei, Cologne, DE (2024); and Couture, Galerina, London, UK (2023). Recent group exhibitions include ZONE, Reena Spaulings, New York, US (2024); 118 1/2, Emalin, London, UK (2024); A Crooked World, Drei, Cologne, DE (2023); Slow Dance (3), Stadtgalerie, Bern, CH (2023); Ways of Living 3.0, Arcadia Missa, London, UK (2023); World as diagram, work as dance, Emalin, London, UK (2023); Hello, Galerina, London, UK (2022).