NOSFERASTA
ADAM KHALIL, BAYLEY SWEITZER, OBA
SEPTEMBER 16 - OCTOBER 22, 2023

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Someday is pleased to announce Nosferasta, by Adam Khalil, Bayley Sweitzer and Oba, opening Friday, September 16th from 6-8pm. The US premiere of the film “Nosferasta: First Bite” (33min | 2021 | dir. Khalil and Sweitzer) was held at The Museum of Modern Art on September 19th.

 

Nosferasta features a suite of new sculptures by Oba, a Trinidadian artist and musician living in Brooklyn, who is also the star, executive producer, and co-writer of "Nosferasta: First Bite." Oba’s intricate assemblages utilize a wide variety of media, such as cardboard, acrylic paint, beads, glass, currency of all types, shells, brocade ribbons, sequins, cell phones, glitter, trimming and other textiles. His coffin-like figures reference various mythological idols - Egyptian pharaohs, demigods, ritualistic burial sites and Art Historical effigies. Painstakingly crafted in his bedroom, Oba’s adorned sculptures recall shrouded altars, obscured (perversely) beneath an accumulation of offerings from their own worshipers.

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Presented within this immersive installation is a seamlessly looped version of Nosferasta: First Bite, which reimagines Oba’s own origin story as an immortal Rastafarian vampire, and Christopher Columbus, Oba’s original biter, who work together spreading the colonial infection throughout the “new world.” Glimpses of Oba’s early years as Columbus’ young protege are blended with present day scenes of a now mortal Oba as he confronts the imperial bureaucracy he once helped establish. Together, the sculptures and film culminate in an impressionistic blur that poses questions of authorship, collaboration, and myth while also offering a glimmer of hope that it is perhaps possible to escape Babylon while still living inside of it.

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Nosferasta is commissioned and produced by Gasworks, London, and Spike Island, Bristol, as part of the European Cooperation project 4Cs: From Conflict to Conviviality through Creativity and Culture, co-funded by Creative Europe and the Royal College of Art. The film is also supported by Creative Capital and Cinereach. Nosferasta's US premiere will be held at The Museum of Modern Art, New York on September 19, 2022.