Detail of textile in progress for Otobong Nkanga: Cadence. Courtesy of the artist © Otobong Nkanga (photo: Wim van Dongen)

Drip, drip, driiiiiiip … dropdropdropopopop … driiiiiippppppp …

A deluge begins with a single droplet, a waterfall from the tiniest source on high. One raindrop always means another is on its way – there is more where that came from, goes the old saying. A solitary splash (the kind you see in those photographs of drops of milk, creating instantaneous crowns) is soon followed by a second and then a multitude, until the cascading beads pitter-patter feverishly on the ground.

Here comes the rain, slow and stuttering at first… but then those tears multiply and there is no stopping them as the sobbing turns to a rhythmic lament, an ululating excretion of liquid and truth…

D…D…D
r…r…r
i…o…r
p…p…r
D…D…r
r…r…r
i…o…r
p…p…r
D…D…i
r…r…i
i…o…i
p…p…i
D…D…p
r…r…p
i…o…p
p…p…p

But now you are not just crying, but wailing and laughing, because the rain and the pain is so intense that there is no point in denying it, there is only joy in being in it, succumbing to it. The clouds finally part and you can see it all above you, the stars, the sun and the vast celestial firmament, in between the last lasers of falling water.

There are still clouds lurking in your peripheral vision, some seeming to promise more rain, others that are clearly not natural, but manmade and pinkish in color, holding God-only-knows-what. They used to call it acid rain, but now the toxins come in all different flavours, strengths and concentrations. One ominous cloud holds your attention because, although scalloped and beautiful, it is persistent, self-regenerating and relentlessly grey. What these billowing clouds are dropping is not rain, there are too many chemicals colliding, too many competing agents, the wrong kind of isotopes. Instead, these volcanic eruptions release a different kind of fury, tears of fire and beams of destruction that bloom and fan out across the land as they hit home, releasing a terrifyingly beautiful display of plumage and plunder.

These new blots on the landscape co-exist with the trees still clinging on to life and other resilient fungal species from the before-times. Some of them you recognise, especially your favorites with the vibrant leaves, or those that shed the pollen that waters your eyes when the seasons change. There have been climactic changes beyond just the weather, not everything can survive the recent downpours as well as the upticks in temperature. You have helped to prop some of these plants up, keeping their chins up with sustenance and structure when they looked down in the mouth. You have had to keep your own frame from going south at times too, with just a little enhancement here, a few supplements and bodily aids there. You are still at the centre of it all, still more-or-less in control, somehow holding things together.

External forces have conspired against you, you reason with yourself. It was others who interfered with your proposed off-worlds, who wanted to retreat into their digital domains and didn’t pay enough attention to what was going on at surface level. There was no way of knowing that the machines you made to help build these new outposts would do more harm than good, maybe in the end they were just reflections of your own blinkered version of progress. After all, some trees have to fall to the forest floor to allow others to live in their roots and hollows. You were just mining what was there – no more, no less.

This is an original text written for the exhibition Otobong Nkanga: Cadence, which is on view at MoMA October 10, 2024–June 8, 2025.