A Conversation with Lisa C Soto and Gershon Gidisu, co-creators of "Rooms? 1,2,3: Forgotten memories of my life as a weed", at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology Botanical Gardens in Kumasi, Ghana, by James Scarborough

"Rooms? 1,2,3: Forgotten memories of my life as a weed", set within the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) Botanical Gardens in Kumasi, Ghana, represents a radical departure from traditional art spaces. Conceived and executed by Lisa C Soto and Gershon Gidisu, this installation redefines gallery space through a series of 8x8x8 cubes that push physical and conceptual boundaries. These structures elicit a dialogue set within the context of a natural environment. The exhibition refocuses the viewer's experience from passive observation to active engagement. It challenges visitors to rethink their relationship between art, environment, and community. This approach seeks to transform the spectator's role, inviting contemplation on the transient nature of art and its capacity to resonate within and beyond the confines of traditional gallery walls.

JS: How do your distinct backgrounds in visual art and design influence the conceptualization and execution of the "Rooms?" series in the botanical setting of KNUST?

GG: I have been practicing within the field of spatial design and set design for theatrical events, and collaborating with other colleague artists designing and building mounts and exhibitions. My interests lay in architecture more specifically my research on nomadic architecture as a possibility for exhibition making, with a reference to joinery and adaptability of African nomadic architecture. It is therefore in this line of thought and in my interest in seeing the possibilities of a nomadic art ‘gallery?’ which brings me to the design of these 8x8x8 cubes. These various interests combined with my personal relationship with Lisa and her work, initiated this series. Both from seeing her work and from helping install her exhibitions, led me to envisioning some of her works in a different format. This was the beginning of the series, in discussions and in sharing ideas and in thinking through the work and the exhibition together, we came up with these three Rooms? and I invited Lisa to intervene. These structures are 8x8x8 feet constructed with 12 wooden planks and metal joints. The location of the botanical gardens was due to the locations she had chosen to exhibit in the past, always showing in some kind of greenery. We considered the Bobiri Forest in Kumasi but first scouted the Botanical Gardens, almost gave up, went in deeper and found three clearings with interesting vibrations, in which to exhibit.

LS: Yes, this invitation from Gershon and our past conversations led us to committing to a collaboration. We often examine each other’s works, ask questions about our processes and encourage one another to go deeper with our themes, materials and ideas. I remember when Gershon showed me his first cubes before he had named them Rooms? – as though to question if this wall-less space could actually be seen as a room, he is pushing the boundaries of its definition. There was a presence to the cubes as though they were living entities, the materiality really emanated in how he put together these structures with these materials.

In terms of execution, we began to experiment with one of the materials I often incorporate into my work, plants, to see how they would react to the space. Because of the flexibility of the wall-less walls, I chose to use a red mesh to create three walls and a ceiling where the plants would be installed. Many decisions together both navigated by our ideas but also the materials themselves, led to three distinct worlds.

In Room? 1 we used the red mesh adorned with branches, leaves, and vines, so the viewer is surrounded with cut plants against its opposite color creating contrast but also symbolic in many ways including blood as life or a warning of danger. An old cupboard from my kitchen was suspended above eye level, filled with personal items such as bottles and vials of medicines that I had consumed such as blood tonic which also comes from edible green leaves; materialities from my garden such as seeds, or from the beach where I found parts of the spine of a whale that had died on shore; as well as my broken calabash bowl with a Taino symbol painted on it, symbolizing my ancestral lineage; long grass from Bosomtwi lake and a plant I acquired in Burkina Faso called the Rose of Jericho that symbolizes rebirth as it can remain dry for up to seven years without dying, it comes back to life when placed in water. Under the cabinet I placed two drawers, the inside painted red like the mesh walls, filled half way with earth and the blood tonic vials streaming down into the earth placed in the drawers. This room really allured to myself, my body, health, life, death, lineage, heritage and pushing the boundaries of home.

Rooms? 2 was filled with nests I had collected from a river side in the Western Region, hemp string creating a woven ceiling and large dried leaves a few inches thick on the ground.

GG: yes, I would like to touch on Rooms? 2 as I am really interested in the idea of weaving, seeing as the history of walls could be traced to weaving wickerwork, and in different iterations of a wall, separating the inside from the outside, to the extent that these nests are made waterproof, so water cannot enter, and in the context of this wall or space and referencing upright walls and the room within the Room?. This same idea of weaving is reflected in the hemp rope on the roof as we looped the rope to weave a ceiling which goes back to reference parts of Lisa’s past work.

LS: Rooms? 3 is quite distinct from the first two. This space has two walls made from a collage of local mirrors with wooden frames. There are two sizes creating a repeated pattern of 16 mirrors for one wall and 16 mirrors for the other, as four sets of four. There are spaces between the sets that allow the viewer to see beyond the structure. As with the other two Rooms? it is set in a clearing surrounded by trees, vines and a thicket of tall, green, bamboo. It takes time to settle in to the visuals but eventually one may notice that the part of their body that is not reflected is replaced with the standing trees and leaves, branches and such so that theoretically and visually your body has gone through a transformation, it transpires into both flora and mammal. The concept behind this installation is creating a space to reflect on and practice the techniques of Somatic Movement. I studied Somatic technique under Cianes Fernandez at the University UFBA during my time at the Villa Sul Salvador residency in Brasil last year. This research inspired extending the conversation of the body moving through natural environments or ingesting plants as medicine, to reacting to the sounds and energies of the environment and responding through movements that are not pre-conceived.

GG:  Rooms? 3 is almost like a utopian space that is unreachable, the body is recreated in the reflection, within the mirror you see yourself fragmented, nature reflecting in them and if you don’t pay attention you can almost feel that the mirrors are not there. The fragmentations bring you back, but then again in those fragments what pops up this time are real plants behind the mirrors and not the 2D. But in this 2-dness you have yourself and nature in a realm that you almost cannot reach.

JS: Lisa, your work has evolved through interactions with plant matter and installations that engage viewers. How does the botanical garden setting influence your choice of materials and the design of interactive experiences within the "Rooms?" cubes?

LS: I feel like we chose the botanical gardens because of the materials I engage with, it is the materials that influenced the space we chose.

GG: I think it is back and forth, we started with some of the materials and ideas we had already been discussing. We came to see the space in the Botanical Gardens and it actually influenced some of the decisions we made. For example, the mirrors were conceived here in this space. Lisa said let’s do a big mirror, a reflective surface and then in discussions we came up with the smaller, separate mirrors. Even in Rooms? 2 putting the hemp rope to make a ceiling which takes us back to Lisa’s past work that talked about connectivity (Convergence, public work in Newark, NJ). Then the nests were introduced for that room. We had to think of a way of putting up the nests and some of the characteristics that came with the nests, which are the twigs, inspired how to put them up.

LS: Yes, because we created a wall with those branches to engage with the nests, the nests provoked that. Yes, it was very much a call and response, very process oriented. Though the gardens did not have much influence on the design of the interactive experiences, that was very much influenced by the structure and the parameters in which I chose to engage.

GG: I don’t think it was a direct, or straight line, as we allowed ourselves to be influenced by some elements within the botanical gardens.

JS: Gershon, you've expressed a fascination with materials and the structure of things. How do you select and manipulate materials in creating these 8x8x8 foot cubes to ensure they resonate with the botanical environment and the artworks they encase?

GG: My fascination with materials begins with the materiality of those materials, their physical properties, their material history. For example, looking at plastic and its history and its ability to look like other materials like wood or stone. Looking at metal and its importance to the industrial revolution or the roles they play in wars, it’s all those things. Coming down to when two different materials put side by side can cause a certain reaction or a certain energy. So, for me it begins from there. The importance of them in human evolution, gadgets, medicine, the sciences, things we are only able to make because of plastics but this same material is bringing us to doom. It is this aura this material gives that I am interested in, so if I put this next to this, it could mean this, it could create this feeling. For example, in some of my shoe sculptures I use this velvet material, alluding you to softness, then you have nails poking out of them, it creates a certain perception, it gives off certain energies.

In the context of this exhibition I had already been working with wood and for my research I was thinking back to ways I could put together a structure that was collapsible. I started playing with joints, joinery, sockets and plugs and welding these joints and looking at how it could come together as a space without walls. Materially that is how I would say the process comes together to form. For this work in particular, I was thinking of a way to make it as simple as possible so a space that can be put together by as few hands as possible, it can be there and disappear and come back in another space.

JS: The "Rooms?" series challenges traditional notions of gallery spaces. Can you discuss the theory that informs your reimagining of exhibition spaces as "placeless places"?

GG: One of my main interests was to take away the idea of the wall from the exhibition space, or to take a look again at what the wall is and look at its histories and its beginnings, which are found in wicker work. The first walls were woven, they were woven branches, woven palm fronds, so looking at walls as soft entities that are disappearing and appearing. Then taking note of some of the characteristics of the wall being a hard separation between the inside and the outside. Once you are in the exhibition space you are enclosed and everything that is happening outside is none of your business. This is effective because you can concentrate on the work and transcend into the work or become one with the work. You lose your body and become the disembodied eye. But this time around we are trying to question whether we can take away those entities and still create that space of transcendence, maintaining that characteristic of the exhibition space. To be able to take you out of this world into another world where you are thinking of other possibilities.

JS: How do you envision the role of the audience in interacting with the "Rooms?" installations, particularly in terms of movement, sensory engagement, and the creation of meaning?

LS: The audience become participants, they add to the work by their presence, contributing to it by immersing themselves into the installations. I consider them and the work demands that they be more than viewers, engaging with more than just the ocular, they are having a whole sensorial experience with each room. The environment  assists in the experience, within which Rooms? 1,2,3 are placed. The sounds are coming from both inside and outside of the installations, for example, the nest room with the large, dried leaves beneath your feet, they are both crunchy and plush which your body experiences, while your steps induce sound from them. The branches are sticking out erratically so at some point you may feel them grazing against you. There is also smell, the death of the bats, the rain and decaying leaves, so the participant, the body is having a whole experience and is in a world within a world. Though I don’t find as you say the viewers role to be vital to the work. I think the materiality in and of the environment is more vital and with whom we are having a collaboration, quite intentionally.

GG: For me the audience extends beyond the human because you mentioned the materiality of this space becoming active agents in the exhibition making. I actually feel like we have rather encroached on this space. All of these organisms, this whole space is living, the plants, the centipedes, the millipedes, the squirrels, birds, the spiders, this is their home. We came to drop the Rooms? here, so in this case we acknowledge them. They are important factors in the work. So, when you asked in the beginning how the space influenced the work and we were talking about the back and forth, the work is not even completed. There will be workshops with students, some of the works will grow, like the plants now growing in the drawers of Rooms? 1, some of the texts written on the back of the mirrors will fade, there will be cobwebs, other animals will inhabit the spaces, so it is continuous.

JS: Your collaboration extends to non-human beings in the botanical gardens. Can you elaborate on how this interspecies interaction informs the conceptual and physical layout of your installations?

LS: As Gershon said, we have rather entered a whole eco-system that functions on its own. It was exciting to imagine how this real world would interact with our made-up worlds. To work in a manner that is the opposite of the white cube by letting go of control and instead observe and give in to the agency of the materialities living in the Botanical Gardens. We used some materials from the Gardens to build up the spaces such as the leaves, vines, and branches but then they create their own agency, in concert with other materialities such as the wind, the rains, and the sun. Entities such as a baby lizard, or the spider building a nest and laying her eggs in the cupboard, or the constant stream of ants on the wood structure or digging holes in the ground they all have their own agency which is really the final work, the observations of the changes made by these non-human beings, these other persons who have their own ways of existing, interacting and being.

JS: In what ways do considerations of sustainability and environmental ethics inform the choice of materials and the overall design of your project?

GG: For me, it goes back to wanting to move away from a solid structure, that takes space and is difficult to dispose of, and move to soft walls. Some of the parts can play dual roles so that if you are not using it for the structure you can use it for another thing and they are not wasted after a show or two, you bring it out when needed and tuck it away when not. It comes from the sustainability of the exhibition space. The 8x8x8 planks are made from the Cedrela Odorata tree. This wood is durable, termites are not going to affect it. Even the rust of the metal joints will go back to the earth, from which they came. Every material refers back to the earth, nature is the base material from which we make other materials. The idea is for the structure to be adaptable, its metallic joints, for this particular one there are three slots for the cubes but there are other forms that are t-joints or x-joints. So, it means you can add more and create another space. I am interested in seeing the possibilities of this space in different contexts, this is one context which is the context of exhibition making. I have used this same idea of the lines and the joints in stage design, which also tests the possibilities of it and I am looking forward to testing it in other areas. Longevity is important to me and the idea of having a chain of thought, where it is not ending, you can add, you can subtract, you can use this context or that context, that is how I consider sustainability.

LS: I don’t think I am considering environmental ethics, it doesn’t really inform my choice of materials per se, though I am currently using natural materials, so it has become inherent in the work. In my past work the metal and plastic I used to create sculptures, those materials are referring to natural materials. The metal wire, hardware, fishing line, bullet shells and Mylar are made from processed minerals and those minerals were made from millions of years of compacted plant matter. My decision to work with plants, earth, seeds, etc. evolved from working with industrial materials because in the end, they are made from plants.

JS: How do the cultural and historical contexts of Kumasi and the broader Ghanaian environment influence the thematic and aesthetic decisions in your work?

GG:  On the personal front I think on my first encounter with a collapsible, my grandfather Tseko’s akpasa which is an old, rustic, wooden, two-part collapsible lazy chair with a bottom that slides into the lower part of the back rest. My grandfather Tseko also had a foldable table and there was my mother’s foldable camp cot made from wood and the old flour sack’s material known as ashikinsha kotoku, they were the first forms of collapsibles I was exposed to.

Looking at the exhibition culture, first of all it is very painting oriented, which takes us back to the beginnings of modern art in Ghana. Currently, there is so much creative expression, and such a range of work coming from artists, but the gallery setting is limiting to works beyond paintings and sculptures of certain dimensions. It is this lack of alternative or diverse spaces to exhibit in, that brought me back to the collapsibles. And providing the avenue and the human resource to collaborate on an experimental level with other colleague artists and practitioners.

LS: I find Ghana to be quite similar to Puerto Rico, the climate, flora and landscapes are very similar in some ways, but Ghana is a much larger country with a history of Russian built and tropical brutalist architecture that has resulted in a scattering of very large unfinished abandoned buildings. These president-initiated buildings on the scale of libraries, or multilevel structures for public use are abandoned once the next president of the opposing party gets into office. After years or decades, they often begin to in a sense merge with plants where these “weeds” overtake or grow wildly around the building. These structures have greatly influenced the scale and choices I make in my work in that I consider these spaces in the process of creating.

JS: Based on your experiences with the "Rooms?" series, what future directions do you envision for the evolution of exhibition spaces in contemporary art?

GG: I have been helping artist put up their exhibitions and I have seen the struggle of young artists finding space to exhibit in, and most of the time they find themselves working within the context of a particular type of space. This adaptable structure becomes what you want it to be, first of all there are no walls, so there are no limitations, dream. I have experience in building in material techniques, how to manipulate certain materials, so my approach is let’s dream I will help you think it through new processes you probably haven’t used in your practice. In consideration of certain ideas, how the location and other elements affect the work. It is not as though for example, you have a work, and I have a space and you put the work in the space and you have a show. It’s more like there is an idea of a space and there is an idea of the work or your processes you do or have done, so now how do we create another possibility for your work? Regarding the Rooms? even though they are 8x8x8 which is fixed, the idea that the work could take on the structure and be one with the structure or expand from the structure and grow from it, becoming a way to extend or push that boundary of what the structure or an exhibition setting could be, is what I find intriguing.

LS: I think it is important to note that there is a whole history in Kumasi for the last 10 or more years of exhibitions happening in all kinds of alternative spaces all over the city and Gershon has contributed to this history. I see the Rooms? as a natural extension to what has been happening in a city with no contemporary galleries or museums but a history of hundreds of exhibitions through blaxTARLINES, our artist collective through the Department of Painting and Sculpture.

JS: Lastly, what has been the most surprising or enlightening aspect of your collaboration, and how might it shape your future individual or joint projects?

LS: We have been good friends for a number of years, so there are expectations from that knowledge, but we had not worked together in this way. I think I was actually surprised, how fluid we worked together, how innovative we were together, and how innovative I became because I was inspired by Gershon’s way of thinking. It was very interesting that we would come to solutions from very different directions but always ending up in the same place. Our problem solving brought us to the same point but from different perspectives. I think in the past problem solving with others brought us to a final destination but they were not at the same place. Wherever new roads needed to be taken, where we reached a split road and had to decide which direction to take, we had an effective and creative way to problem solve together and we communicated clearly leading us to understanding what was best for the overall project. We came up with interesting problem-solving techniques and we could finish each other’s moves which lead us to interesting conclusions.

GG: Yes, we know each other’s strengths and weaknesses. And for me, I am like a continuous collaborator, I am always making something for or with someone. I always have to give you the floor, so you can operate to your fullest capacity. My role is to question “Why not this? Why not that? In that whynotness we think it through, and we come to a conclusion. I don’t think there has been any particular difficulties. I left the wheel, from the onset I didn’t want to have any control I am just like let’s think of possibilities, we have been open to see what emanates from the beginning, we didn’t have a set idea, we started with a sketch, an idea that I had, in the long run it became very different. Regarding the future exhibitions, Lisa and I have the idea of setting up one Rooms? installation in a natural environment where we can record it decaying completely. There is also a possibility that in thinking in a chain of thought, which is what I usually am interested in - an idea does not end but it’s always adding, subtracting and growing – after working with other artists I most likely will come back and work with Lisa again.

Photos courtesy of Lisa C Soto and Gershon Gidisu