DAVID ZINK YI
HORROR VACUI

DR MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. BUILDING
20 MARCH – 6 JUNE 2021

LIVERPOOL BIENNALE 2021

David Zink Yi presents the two-channel video installation Horror Vacui (2009) at Dr Martin Luther King Jr. building. The work operates as an extended picture without a beginning nor an end. The film centers around De Adentro y Afuera, a Latin band founded by Zink Yi and Cuban musicians, and combines footage of their rehearsals with images of ceremonial rituals rooted in Afro-Cuban culture. The emphasis is on the role of the rituals in the production of the music and vice versa. The ceremonies documented in the film, known as Cajon, Tambor Batá and Wiro, relate to the African diasporic religions Palo Congo and Santería and the religion of the the Yoruba people – whose spirituality and culture originates in Nigeria, Benin and in the Congo Basin and lies at the root of different religious traditions in the Americas today due to the African Diaspora. In Zink Yi’s work, the band rehearsals and music filled with religious rituals are equally positioned as spaces where collective and individual identities can develop outside of oppressive power structures – as alternatives to relationships built on extraction and inferiority.

Amidst the vast web of collaboration and dependency, which links the protagonists of both social universes, Horror Vacui permits the spectator to become a channel, unifying fragments and intervals, immersing us in the colourful and seductive universe of Afro-Cuban music, whilst paying homage to the endless performative power of all the participants. 

Supported by Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen. 

© Images Rob Battersby

FEATURED ARTIST

DAVID ZINK YI
David Zink Yi (b. 1973 in Lima, Peru) lives and works in Berlin. He explores the body as a site of identity, memory, and transformation, engaging with a wide range of media in the process. From video and sculpture to ceramics, sound, and performance, his art reflects his complex heritage. As a descendant of Indigenous Peruvians, as well as Chinese, Italian, and German immigrants, his own body – situated at the intersection of diverse cultural identities – becomes a focal point in his practice. Zink Yi’s earliest works focused on self-reflection, using the camera to develop a form of self-ethnography. This approach later evolved into a prot...
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