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Virtually Mine

Virtually Mine

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Immy Mali

Immy Mali’s sculpture “Virtually Mine” consists of rectangular glass plates that mimic the surface of a Sony Xperia mobile phone that the artist owned at the time she made this work. On this phone, the artist texted and spoke with her fiancé via WhatsApp and Skype messaging applications. A university graduate in landscape and interior design, Mali’s fiancé took work as a security guard in the United Arab Emirates, as it paid more than his design position in Uganda. The artist drew from her life to reproduce a year’s worth of intimate conversations between herself and her fiancé on the glass plates. When installed, the glass plates are suspended from a wooden grid, forming the silhouette a large male figure suspended in air. This work speaks to the artist’s longing for her absent partner, the role of technology in contemporary relationships, and to global labor issues and economic inequities.
Artist
Immy Mali
(Ugandan, b. 1990)
Title
Virtually Mine
Date
2016
Medium
Glass tiles and printed vinyl
Dimensions
variable; approx. 108 x 45 x 20 in. overall
Credit
Joen Greenwood Endowment Fund purchase
Accession No.
2023.3
Classification
Sculpture
Geography
Uganda

Related

February 2023, sold by the artist [Immy Mali] (Wakiso, Uganda) to the Chazen Museum of Art

  • Chazen Museum of Art. "Insistent Presence: Contemporary African Art from the Chazen Collection." Madison, WI: Regents to the University of Wisconsin System and New York: Thames & Hudson, 2023. pp. 88-89, cat. no. 41

  • Insistent Presence: Contemporary African Art from the Chazen Collection: Chazen Museum of Art, 9/5/2023–12/23/2023
  • Re-Retour de Babel: Centres d'art de Dudelange, Luxembourg, 9/17/2022–12/11/2022

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