{"id":275870,"date":"2026-05-01T17:40:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T22:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/portfolio\/po-b-k-lomami\/"},"modified":"2026-04-29T15:13:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T20:13:15","slug":"po-b-k-lomami","status":"publish","type":"portfolio","link":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/portfolios\/po-b-k-lomami\/","title":{"rendered":"Po B. K. Lomami"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Po B. K. Lomami\u2019s iterative and interactive artworks visualize and materialize how time loops and stretches when white normativity is refused and disability, queerness, and Blackness serve as the organizing principles of social relationships and infrastructures. Lomami leverages durational media to create installations that unfurl in and as crip time, swooping gracefully from the intimate and embodied to the structural and conceptual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In aksanti 33 (part 2<\/em>) (2023), a thirty-three-hour performance, Lomami shared their final doses of Valtran, a non-addictive opioid-based medication, with participants who accompanied them as they spent their last hours pain-free. Pfizer had chosen to discontinue the unprofitable medication, leaving Lomami without a safe source of relief from chronic pain and depriving them of a ritual that maintained familial connections across geographies and timelines: Lomami had provided their maternal aunt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo with Valtran up to her death. During the performance, the softly altered state induced by the microdosed medication created a collective, embodied experience of vulnerability. The participants\u200a\u2014\u200asome of whom were strangers to each other\u200a\u2014\u200ahad to rest together, and the effect lingered in their bodies for the remainder of the day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lomami continually reactivates traces of previous works, forming iterative experiences that mimic the cycle of chronic pain and its attendant care work. In the photographic series Endling <\/em>(2023), images in dialogue with the performance aksanti 33 (part 1) <\/em>(2022\u200a\u2013<\/em>23) offer veiled glimpses of body parts and otherworldly settings. The performance\u2019s labour constantly recurs, disrupting the present. Are the images foggy memories of agony, futuristic fever dreams? The black-and-white photographs enact the bewildering timescape of grief, itself a debilitating experience that is rarely acknowledged in capitalism\u2019s extractive mode of living.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lomami\u2019s works show that the ramifications of disabling environments cannot be compartmentalized into binaries such as body and mind, human and nonhuman. In the ongoing series Nothing<\/em>, global weather data are used to give shape to the destructive effects of neocolonial resource extraction in the DRC. Through abstraction, the interactive audiovisual installations accentuate the difficulty of grasping the magnitude of ecocide, all while challenging visitors to allow routine catastrophes to still stop them in their tracks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\"In
Po B. K. Lomami<\/strong>
Endling 09 (In Presence)<\/em>, 2023.
Photo: courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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\"In
Po B. K. Lomami<\/strong>
aksanti 33 (part 2.1)<\/em>, installation view, Montr\u00e9al, arts interculturels (MAI), 2024.
Photo: Paul Litherland, courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":275863,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":true},"categories":[885],"numeros":[8014],"disciplines":[],"statuts":[],"checklist":[],"auteurs":[8018],"artistes":[7019],"thematiques":[],"type_portfolio":[],"class_list":["post-275870","portfolio","type-portfolio","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-portfolio","numeros-117-crip","auteurs-abigail-e-celis-en","artistes-po-b-k-lomami-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/portfolio\/275870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/portfolio"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/portfolio"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275870"},{"taxonomy":"numeros","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/numeros?post=275870"},{"taxonomy":"disciplines","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/disciplines?post=275870"},{"taxonomy":"statuts","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/statuts?post=275870"},{"taxonomy":"checklist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/checklist?post=275870"},{"taxonomy":"auteurs","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/auteurs?post=275870"},{"taxonomy":"artistes","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artistes?post=275870"},{"taxonomy":"thematiques","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/thematiques?post=275870"},{"taxonomy":"type_portfolio","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/type_portfolio?post=275870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}