Tensions in the Grid – A Reflection on Bricks, Wire, and the Invisible Architecture of Power and Memory

In a quiet corner of the ARD space, an abstract sculpture built from bricks and tangled wire demands attention—not with grandeur, but with weight. The bricks are irregular, some chipped or scorched,stained with the hues of its firing. The wires twist through and around the bricks, binding the bricks together, as if resisting collapse or enforcing cohesion.

The materials feel familiar, even domestic. Wire, a nod to the networks we rely on yet rarely see—power lines, fences, circuits,the veins of our technological and bureaucratic systems. But here,stripped from function, these elements are recontextualized into something almost mournful. The installation refuses to give us a clean, upright structure. Built without binding, resisting gravity in places, light shines between the crevices. It’s a body caught between holding together and falling apart.

A video projection almost meets the brick wall, blocking the ARD library and projecting a reversal of a documentary ‘The World Saves Abu Simbel’ (1972).

What happens if time is reversed? If erasure is part of remembering?

Bricks create solid, impenetrable blocks, while others are spaced unevenly, as if hinting at a path that’s deliberately inaccessible.A library concealed behind the brick wall, asks what it feels like not to gain access? The wire alternately entangles and connects,creating moments of fragile passage—gateways that can’t quite be passed through, systemic barriers, for who gets to move freely and who is ensnared by the infrastructure meant to support them.

Memory lives in the brick’s patina, in the wire’s potential to rust. These materials are haunted by previous lives—structures that were destroyed, abandoned, or forgotten. Each component is a fragment of something once whole.

A wall inscription overlooks the installation….

you are embraced by your history

أنت محاط بتاريخك

…. referring to the potential for your personal and owned memory to encircle and embrace you. The bricks and clay portraits point to the 2025 Àsìkò cohort who recognize themselves as observers between Egypt and the many homes they occupy.

Can this installation provide a reckoning with infrastructure as a form of governance. Here, the basic materials of construction are rendered dysfunctional, infrastructure can be as much about exclusion as it is about support. The work makes visible what is usually hidden beneath concrete and policy: the fragile, contingent scaffolding upon which society is built.

This is not just an installation. It is a question, a wound, a map.

– A note by Tammy, Idris and Sarafadeen

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Participation in Asiko was possible through the generous support of CCA Lagos, Nigeria

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