A Timeline of Infinite Skies

About

A Timeline of Infinite Skies is an installation, performance and soundscape by the artist duo Antonio Jose Guzman and Iva Jankovic who are based in the Netherlands.
The exhibition filling the Main Gallery at Phoenix Art Space centres their trademark indigo-dyed patterned textiles displayed on structures and in forms in which audiences can immerse themselves.

The installation reflects on intertwined histories of wealth, empire and cultural memory by highlighting Brighton and Hove’s largely hidden or forgotten conjoined legacies resulting from the forced migration of enslaved people. Conceptually, this work reconnects the city to its ancestral archives and explores the tension between profit and protest. Here the tension between the wealth generated for residents by the plantation slavery system and the strong strand of abolitionism that rooted and flourished in the city.

The immersive environment of A Timeline of Infinite Skies invites audiences to navigate a continuum of Brighton’s past, present and speculative futures, tracing connections between migration, labour, archives and the conditions that have shaped and continue to shape the city’s identity.

Antonio Jose Guzman and Iva Jankovic have worked together on artworks, soundscapes and performances for more than ten years as the collective Messengers of the Sun, a nod to musician Sun Ra’s Afrofuturist mythologies.