Coil: The Sensuous Way of Knowing, 2022, 2022.

Created specifically for this exhibition, the installation arose out of an idea to recreate an altar from a spiritual mafa ceremony in which Ehlers participated on a beach in San Francisco in 2019. The floor is covered with foil thermal blankets of the kind distributed to disaster victims, including refugees who have tried in vain to cross the Mediterranean. On the floor are glowing mobile phones, reminiscent of altar candles and acting as commemorative markers. The screens show YouTube footage of fires associated with historical and contemporary political uprisings around the world, including protests in Rhodesia against the British regime’s apartheid policy in 1972, rallies in aid of Mozambique’s independence in 1975, the protests sparked by the 1991 police brutality against Rodney King in California, the Black Lives Matter uprising in Paris as well as the riots associated with the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020.

Building on this, Ehlers examines connections between rebellion and freedom in a new, meditative video work. It shows a close-up of hair being braided while a voice-over muses on how enslaved women in South America and the Caribbean used cornrows to form maps of escape routes, to hide rice and seeds and to send secret messages. The installation explores the intersections between two political spaces: on the one hand is the symbolism linked to Black hair, and on the other hand are the socio-political conditions associated with the presentday legacy of colonisation. As in many of Ehlers’ works, the sad and sorrowful aspects are not allowed to stand alone. There is always hope, expressed through representations of rebellion, community and healing.