Hip-hop is a bicoastal game, at least that’s how it’s framed. Even decades after its founding, East and West back and forth roared over the constellation of regional scenes at the genre’s bedrock. Cities like Houston, Philadelphia and Atlanta pushed their own dialects into the national sonic lifeblood, yet Memphis is still one of the most unsung engines.
Thousands of miles away, decades later in Paris, a young Christelle Oyiri took a liking to the gritty 808s, lo-fi drawl and raw, sinister subjects of Three 6 Mafia’s early tapes. Raised in a Christian household, she found something comforting in its darkness, something that resonated with her own uneasy relationship with faith and how it flourishes because of its many contradictions, not in spite of them.
“I didn’t have much of a fixed idea of who I wanted to be,” she told Hypeart, reflecting on her teenage years. “I just knew I wanted intensity and movement in my life.” Those dreams became realized in the form of a contemporary art practice that bridges film, sculpture, installation and sound, produced under her DJ moniker, CRYSTALMESS. Often tuned to the aesthetics of underground sonic cultures, her work has been exhibited in some of Europe’s most prominent art venues, like LAS Art Foundation, Tate Modern and the Centre Pompidou.
She never shook that love for Memphis rap, so for her first stateside solo, it only made sense to go straight to the source. Now open at Amant in Brooklyn, New York, her new exhibition, Belief May Vary, dives into the mythos of Memphis, Tennessee — a place where, as she puts it, “religion, music and mythology all converge as a survival strategy.”
The showcase brings tangibility to the genre’s ghostly aura. Aluminum-cast mixtapes by names like Tommy Wright III and 8Ball & MJG, while a lenticular print of street proselytizers flank the walls. A sculptural reimagining of the Memphis Pyramid — now a Bass Pro Shops — crowned with a crystal skull brings focus to an unmistakably American monumentalism, where ancient symbols of death and transcendence can be swallowed whole by sports retailers.
At the heart of the gallery is “Hauntology of an OG,” a film created with photographer Neva Wireko during a research trip to the American South. Soundtracked by the voices of local legends, the work charts the alterlives of Memphis, from cemeteries and strip clubs to the chance burning of Clayborn Temple Church. Here, the city is anything, but atmospheric, stepping into the spotlight as the film’s main protagonist.
In the days leading up to her U.S. debut, Oyiri expanded on the allure of Memphis, anti-slasher culture and our state of “spiritual welfare.”
