Jabu Arnell: Turn off the Lights: Disco Ball #13 A Kind of Black 

For his upcoming solo exhibition at Kunstinstituut Melly, Jabu will create a new installation entitled, Turn off the Lights, Disco Ball #13: A Kind of Black, 2024. This sculpture will grow from built, ready-made, and stumbled-upon materials during the exhibition period. With Disco Ball #13 the artist digs deeper into Disco as a cultural and historical pillar for queer communities and as a pillar in his own artistic practice. Furthermore, the work questions the intuitive and etymological definitions and implications of its related forms. For the exhibition opening, Arnell will also present the accompanying work, Portrait of [Disco] [Ball] #13 in which he experiments with assumptions and responses to the idea of disco, the form of a ball, and the conceptualization and physicality of the disco ball.

In 1979, Comiskey Park, a baseball stadium in Chicago, planned a promotional event to increase ticket sales. Baseball fans were given a discounted entry ticket to the stadium if they brought a disco record with them to the game. At the end of the evening a massive crate of disco records were destroyed in a theatrical explosion which was returned with the cheers of more than 45,000 people in the stadium. As a herald of Queer, Black, and Hispanic/Latin joy, the music and culture of disco was viewed as a threat to the status quo and pursued with a mixture of fear, excitement, violence, and celebration. For Arnell, the disco ball behaves as a gateway to exploring various phenomena such as vulnerability, beauty, cringe, and glamor.

Jabu Arnell’s artistics practice is made up of often temporary works which are made using a processed-based method which he describes as “conceptuitive”. His work is created through a practice of spontaneous but intentional explorations of themes such as performativity, vulnerability, and impermanence. These themes are explored through the intuitive use of found objects, sculpture, music, light, and collage. Through engagement with such objects Jabu uncovers relationships of push and pull, cause and effect, beauty and ugliness.

The work Turn off the Lights, Disco Ball #13: A Kind of Black was selected by the Commissioning Committee of Hartwig Art Foundation and acquired through the Hartwig Art Production | Collection Fund. It will subsequently be donated to the Dutch state, becoming an integral part of the national art collection (‘Rijkscollectie’), available for institutions in the Netherlands and abroad.

First Double 1 & 2

Jabu's exhibition is part of the series First Double 1 & 2, which takes its title from a collaborative album by South African musicians Madala Kunene, Baba Mokoena, and Sibusiso Mndaweni. The album’s lyrics connect seemingly unrelated activities—such as a mother going to the marketplace, a father attending a racecourse, and anti-colonial resistance chants—to reflect deeper connections between everyday life and broader socio-political themes. Similarly, the five solo exhibitions in First Double 1 & 2 explore diverse yet interconnected topics, including spiritual technologies, mineral extraction, land-related issues, queer cosmologies, and the recollection of historical events. Also included within the series are solo exhibitions by Cihad Caner, Luana Vitra, Nolan Oswald Dennis, and Sara Sejin Chang (Sara van der Heide).