In The Sagosian Markmakers: An Anthropological Interlude (2021), writer and artist Travis Jeppesen transforms the exhibition space into a display room of a faux-archeological museum housing a series of calligraphic works of purportedly Sagosian origin. Sagosia, a fictional island on the Indian Ocean, features in Jeppesen’s forthcoming novel Settlers Landing as a pirate colony, originally founded by a mixed group of Creole and southern Chinese pirates, which later fell under British rule. The quintessential art form of Sagosia is a kind of mark-making performed in quasi-ceremonial style after imbibing rum and entering a trance state. As one enters the display room the audio guide boasts about the history of Sagosia and the provenance of this set of works on view, in a language rich with colonial undertones. Through this satirical narrative the artist ridicules with both humor and acuity the colonial fetishization of indigenous cultures preserved out of context in encyclopedic museums, a peculiar phenomenon of Western modernity. This fictional narrative and its indecipherable works on paper exude a radical illegibility and a wildness that could be considered the artist’s paean to the anarchic nature of many actually-existing island cosmologies world-wide throughout history. 

Currently on view, until November 14, 2021, in Liquid Ground

Curated by Alvin Li and Junyuan Feng 

Para Site
22/F, Wing Wah Ind. Building
677 King’s Road, Quarry Bay
Hong Kong

info@para-site.art

www.para-site.art
Facebook / Instagram / Vimeo / YouTube