'There is no way light and darkness are not in exchange with each other': step inside Christelle Oyiri’s sonic world in Berlin

Thumping hip-hop shifts into dreamlike, electronic tones with cinematic, sci-fi inflections, enveloping CANK Berlin’s expansive second-floor space. The music pulses in sync with the flashing lights hanging from the ceiling, shifting colour to match the room’s cadence. With its Afro-futurist sensibility, this newly commissioned audiovisual installation forms part of French artist, DJ, producer and director Christelle Oyiri’s exhibition ‘Dead God Flow,’ at the LAS Art Foundation. Her first installation in Berlin, the show features sound, scenography and video, considering, trauma, resistance and renewal.

LAS, an organisation that merges art, technology, and science, is known for its light-driven, site-specific installations. In collaboration with Oyiri, they found a way to bring the show to life within the abandoned, former brutalist shopping centre, CANK, in Berlin’s Neukölln borough. 'I'm drawn to light and sound as I come from an electronic music background and being a DJ. A lot of the week, I'm immersed in the darkness and obscurity of nightclubs,’ Oyiri tells Wallpaper*. ‘It was a whole process. I know I'm monomaniac, but I also believe that synchronicity is a language shared across all types of Black people, whether you're African, Caribbean, or Black American.’ The exhibition, which also features a large pyramid-shaped seating area, incorporates spatial design elements reminiscent of a nightclub, with flickering lights and diverse music surrounding the space. Oyiri mentions that she perceives her work through the ‘lens of light and sound,’ rather than through dance.

The exhibition title draws on Friedrich Nietzsche’s ‘God is dead’ proclamation, which challenged traditional European notions of morality, values and life’s purpose. In the 19th century, philosophers like Karl Marx and Freud developed their own views of the world, which Oyiri describes as France’s ‘era of the suspicious’. These thinkers argued that ‘You're poor not because of the devil, but because you have a boss who controls the means of production and refuses to pay you a fair wage,’ Oyiri says. After studying philosophy, she incorporates this ideology into her work.

Throughout, Oyiri also draws from her background. Born to a Catholic Guadeloupean mother and a Protestant Ivorian father, she attended Catholic school and has family members who are pastors. Her liberal-minded parents encouraged real-world experience, yet from secondary school she was already drawn to subverting authority, experimenting with polarities like light versus dark and Christianity versus ancestral Afro-diasporic religions, which have often been misrepresented. ‘I didn't understand why Black people were so averse to spirituality regarding our history. For me, I believe that there is more to the story and I do feel that light and darkness are cohabiting because there's no way after 400 years of slavery and colonisation, light and darkness are not in exchange with each other.’

This complex relationship is reflected in her works in the exhibition. At its centre is the 8-minute video Hauntology of an OG, a sonic journey through Memphis, Tennessee. Created in collaboration with Ghanaian-Canadian photographer Neva Wireko after research in Memphis, the video intertwines history, present and future, moving between conflicts and monuments.

Oyiri describes the piece as ‘echoing a lineage of grandeur and grief,’ especially highlighted by the area’s charged landscape. Memphis has faced many challenges, including the burning of the Clayborn Temple in April 2025, with a scene of this tragedy featured in the film. She witnessed this devastating event while filming. ‘It was hard to witness because I grew up with the idea of the South and the KKK burning churches and spaces Black people rely on. It felt targeted, and it’s frightening because it was a community centre for many who had limited resources. Memphis is a poor city, and those who worked in the church lost their jobs.’

Memphis, is a place of contrasts and dualities, one that Oyiri explores in her video. With over sixty percent of the population being Black, she believed it was important to visit this Bible Belt city, which differs from Atlanta, Georgia, and is considered the Black Mecca. ‘I wanted to go where I could sense that it was previously one of the epicentres of the Confederate state.’

Music is central to Oyiri’s world-building artistry, as presented in Hauntology of an OG, including the sampled voice of Memphis rapper Princess Loko, whose ‘cadence becomes both an elegy and a resurrection’, Oyiri says. Her fascination with Memphis dates back to her teenage years as a fan of Three 6 Mafia. She appreciates the city's role in early rap, its DIY cassette culture, and the ‘deep cuts of YouTube,’ in finding authentic sound that aligns with her love for research. Drawing from her experience growing up with CDs and during the peer-to-peer Napster era, she highlights the vital role of sequencing, interludes, and even skits in music, as reflected in the audiovisual installation in the exhibition. ‘I treat some of my shows like music bodies of work, an album, or an EP.’ She emphasises that she’s drawn to strong concepts and narrative direction, much like a mixtape, incorporating the creativity in her work.

While some projects have a definitive start and end, a few, like Hyperfate (2022), are continually revisited and refined with new edits. This 13-minute video, screened in ‘Dead God Flow,’ considers death, memory, and the martyrdom and ghosts of rappers such as Tupac Shakur, Pop Smoke and Takeoff from the hip-hop group Migos. Their untimely and violent deaths have been mythologised in the collective consciousness. In the narration, Oyiri examines the canonisation of rappers and how celebrity culture, particularly within Black communities, has replaced traditional spirituality. The tragic, often young deaths of rappers are presented as a form of modern sainthood. She asks, ‘Did these young shooting stars already know their fate?’

Working across multiple disciplines grants Oyiri creative freedom and prevents her from being pigeonholed solely by ‘Black aesthetics’. She describes her work as ‘focusing on the things that lie between the lines, including lost mythologies, subcultures and diasporic histories’ and aims for critical thinking. With her recent solo exhibition, In a perpetual remix, where is my song? at The Tanks in Tate Modern, as a recipient of the 2025 Infinities Commission, Oyiri has exhibited her works internationally, including presenting work at the Bourse de Commerce.

With 'Dead God Flow', Oyiri hopes that viewers will take the time to decipher and breathe, and ‘grieve and understand that we are in an era where we consume more than we make. If people within and outside the rap-loving community can take something from the show, it is to understand what the fandom is going through, what the artists are experiencing, and that monuments and a pyramid are only monuments because of their foundations. If the bases are removed, it just doesn't hold. You always have to go back to the foundation.’

Dead God Flow is on until 19 October 2025 at LAS Art Foundation, Berlin