"“I am very pleased to present Ekkolokation, my contribution to the Out In The Open 2021 mural festival curated by Kirk Gallery. I was first approached by the gallery to contribute to the festival over a year ago, but Covid postponed my travel until August 2021. When Lene proposed the mural’s location, I did my usual research via Google maps to locate the wall and observe its multiple vantage points onto the neighborhood. It was a unique location, with its confluence of paths, pedestrian walkways, one-way roads and a train line system all intersecting at the foot of the wall. I created a hand-drawn illustration incorporating the architecture of the building, its windows, the triangular rooftop and rectangular base. I also took into consideration the community of rooftops of neighboring homes that seem to echo down the block.
Ekkolokation is an abstract composition that highlights 4 triangular shapes echoing each other near the top of the wall, all shadowing one another, lit up from different angles by varied light sources. They come together like the multiple paths that converge upon the site. Structurally complimenting the angles of the home's rooftop, the 4 triangles are supported by several transparent level squares, which in turn echo the bottom part of the building. Another point of convergence can be found at the foot of the mural, where the lines all seem to bounce downward toward a confluence, a meeting place. Two partial, transparent, circular forms weave through the mural. One acts as a halo around the center of the design, bringing a feminine form to contrast the linear forms, and creating another point of convergence here. The second, smaller circle echoes the larger one, but uses the lower right corner of the wall as its center point, the junction to all of the foot paths of the street.
I designed the mural on the basis of these two concepts, echo and convergence, which have visual, sonic, structural and social articulations, allowing the mural to echo and speak to the city and to highlight and amplify this site of convergence.”
- Augustine Kofie