Nástio Mosquito: The Age I Don’t Remember, Commissioned by EMDASH Foundation

Multimedia artist Nástio Mosquito brings The Age I Don’t Remember, a one-off site-specific performance, to the ICA, London, on Friday 6 November. Commissioned by EMDASH, a philanthropic foundation that enables cutting-edge projects from contemporary artists, the performance celebrates the relaunch of the EMDASH Award. Bringing together new video and music work to create an immersive performance of song, spoken word, movement and visual projections, The Age I Don’t Remember is the artist’s first solo project in London.

Considered one of the most exciting artists of his generation, Nástio’s practice traverses video and music, performance and installation, with an intense commitment to the open-ended potential of language. Easily misread as a kind of world weariness, his work is the extraordinary expression of an urgent desire to engage with reality at all levels; it is as funny as it is confrontational, as candid as it is ironic, satirical and cool. The Age I Don’t Remember positions the audience within Nástio’s constructed dreamscape, surrounded by musicians, video screens – displaying text works and film pieces – and the mercurial artist himself. Utilising a mix of new and contemporary media, Nástio explores the perceptive realms of dream and reality, asking the audience to test and question the boundaries between the two.

Through his work, Mosquito guesses towards a future in which clear distinctions of perception and ‘self’ are either redundant or irrelevant. Interrogating definitions of art, race, politics or – as here – dreams and reality, Nástio incites the viewer to confront the limitations of language and to consider its power within the contemporary landscape, whilst urging them to validate and achieve their own, individual dreams. The artist explains:
“I want people to have a healthy relationship with their dreams and establish a clarity between dream and illusion. We all want to achieve things, to materialise our ideas; I’m not alone in wanting to make some aspect of dreams a reality. Sometimes functionality is detached from spirituality and dreams, and I don’t think this disconnection is a healthy thing.”

Andrea Dibelius, founder of EMDASH Foundation comments:
“EMDASH foundation is all about enabling artists to think big and realise ambitious ideas and new directions in their work. We are thrilled to be working with Nástio Mosquito – a truly innovative and deeply thoughtful artist of our age. His commitment to engaging people through language, music, video and whole environments - in ways so uniquely his own – is very exciting and we’re honoured to bring this new work to London at the ICA.”