Artist: Sara Wolfert
Exhibition title: Head Channel & Lion – Waking of the Sleeping Lion Ear
Venue: Entrée, Bergen, Norway
Date: February 28 – April 12, 2020
Photography: Thor Brødreskift / all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Entrée, Bergen
Entrée presents Sara Wolfert’s installation Head Channel & Lion – Waking of the Sleeping Lion Ear, a work that has arisen from her interest in a copyright case around a famous song, best known as “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”, with previous titles “Wimoweh” and “Mbube”. A song that many probably know best from the movie “The Lion King”. The song, which has been a major hit several times (in various forms) during the 20th century, became the subject of scandal when it was revealed in the early 2000s that the original author had been completely erased from the history of the song’s origins. Solomon Linda, the author, was active as a singer in Johannesburg in the first half of the 20th century. He died as a poor man in 1962, around the same time that the do-wop band The Tokens, on the other side of the Atlantic, dropped the mega hit version of his song. Through the songs’ long and prosperous path, it has been performed, sampled, copied and used by several different artists and record companies without there being any reference to Solomon Linda. It would take decades of transatlantic transaction, controversy and full on theft before the truth of the song was brought into light. When the story was finally told, it received attention and the ripple effects that would eventually lead to legal prosecution in a situation ‘against all odds’. Sara Wolfert brings the story into a broader framework, with an installation that includes sculpture, animation and performative elements.
Sara Wolfert (b.1980, Sweden) lives and works between Stockholm and Berlin. She graduated from Konstfack University in Stockholm. Her artistic practice focuses on storytelling, manuscripts, archives and cultural appropriation in various forms. Questions that are central to her practice are who has access to, and the opportunity to use, our public and semi-public spaces. She often uses historical or contemporary events as a starting point for her investigative research, and is interested in intertwined authorship and different types of collaboration. She employs media such as drawing, animation, installation, text and performance.
Sara Wolfert, Ear Channel (2017), mixed material (above), Grip (2019), drawing on vinyl (under)
Installation view, Sara Wolfert, Head Channel & Lion- Waking of the Sleeping Lion Ear (2020), animation
Sara Wolfert, Head Channel & Lion- Waking of the Sleeping Lion Ear (2020), animation (detail)
Installation view, Sara Wolfert, Head Channel & Lion- Waking of the Sleeping Lion Ear (2020)
Installation view, Sara Wolfert, Head Channel & Lion- Waking of the Sleeping Lion Ear (2020)
Sara Wolfert, Spinning Wheel (CMYK) (2020), ceramic, stone plaster, acrylic (left), Studies for a Stage II (2019), wood, steel (right)
Sara Wolfert, Spinning Wheel (CMYK) (2020), ceramic, stone plaster, acrylic (detail)
Sara Wolfert, Lion Sauce (2018), animation
Installation view, Sara Wolfert, Head Channel & Lion- Waking of the Sleeping Lion Ear (2020)
Installation view, Sara Wolfert, Head Channel & Lion- Waking of the Sleeping Lion Ear (2020)
Sara Wolfert, Painted Lion (2018), animation
Sara Wolfert, Spinning Wheel (CMYK) (2020), ceramic, stone plaster, acrylic (detail)
Sara Wolfert, Lion Channels (2020), drawing on acoustic isolation foam, steel
Sara Wolfert, Lion Channels (2020), drawing on acoustic isolation foam, steel (detail)
Sara Wolfert, Lion Channels (2020), drawing on acoustic isolation foam, steel (detail)
Installation view, Sara Wolfert, Head Channel & Lion- Waking of the Sleeping Lion Ear (2020)
Sara Wolfert, Perennial Dig (2020), steel, wood, ceramic
Entrée (Bergen), exterior view, March 9th, 2020