INFANT: BANNED SKILLS
2025
INFANT: BANNED SKILLS
INFANT, still from BANNED SKILLS, 2025
BANNED SKILLS is a nonlinear narrative by the artist duo INFANT, sidony o’neal and Bogosi Sekhukhuni. The artists have designed an experience that serves as a portal into their evolving conceptual framework of XENOFORMALISM (XF). The work offers an aesthetic approach to new understandings of cultural representations, using histories of science fiction and digital culture (gaming, computer graphics) as speculative starting points.
The work unfolds along two distinct paths using the psychological phenomenon of the bouba-kiki effect as a primary navigation tool for encountering the XF style. First proposed in the 1920s, the bouba-kiki phenomenon reflects non-arbitrary associations between speech sounds and visual shapes: people associate the word bouba with smooth, rounded shapes and kiki with sharp, angular ones. Within BANNED SKILLS, users choose the bouba or kiki forms, both housed in a “NEST,” to take different paths through the experience. They encounter a range of artifacts—from the Gameboy Advanced SP Tribal Edition to the meticulously shaped bones of a whale forming a necklace—that INFANT has combined to yield unexpected connections. In the upper lefthand corner of the screen, there is an interactive virtual music device that allows users to switch between kiki- and bouba-coded audio landscapes, which in turn emphasizes visual juxtapositions. BANNED SKILLS’ branching sequences encourage viewers to rethink how meaning is formed and reinforced within art, art history, design, science, science fiction, and how these disciplines and genres contribute to collective cultural memory.
Sidony O’Neal (b. 1988) is a conceptual artist whose work and interdisciplinary research is informed by mathematics, architectural systems, and the histories of objects, from 15th Century locking mechanisms to plastic industrial pallets. Their works explore human relationships to objects, labor, and technology.
Their work has been featured in exhibitions at Et al., San Francisco, CA; Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University, Princeton, NJ; Dracula’s Revenge, New York, NY; Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Portland, OR; Veronica, Seattle, WA; Third Born, Mexico City, Mexico; ICA at Maine College of Art and Design, Portland, ME; and Sculpture Center, Long Island City, NY. O’Neal has had residencies at MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA; and Banff Centre, Banff, AB, among others. Their performances have been featured at Kunstverein Düsseldorf, Volksbühne Berlin, and Performance Space New York. O'Neal is the recipient of awards and fellowships including the Oregon Arts Commission's Joan Shipley Award and a Hodder Fellowship from the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University. In 2023, they were awarded a Hallie Ford Fellowship. O'Neal is co-founder of design firm INFANT.
Bogosi Sekhukhuni (b. 1991) is an artist and designer who reflects on cultures and histories of technology. Working across a range of media such as sculpture, video, set design, furniture design and performance, Sekhukhuni suggests ways to think about the mechanics of futurity.
Since 2012, Sekhukhuni’s work has been featured in both solo and group exhibitions, including Role Play, Fondazione Prada, Milan; Age of You, Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai; Art in the Age of Anxiety, Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah; The Art Happens Here: Net Art’s Archival Poetics, New Museum, New York; Bogosi Sekhukhuni, Foxy Production, New York; Rencontres de Bamako, African Biennale of Photography, Mali; and Simunye Summit 2010, Stevenson Gallery, Johannesburg. They have been awarded the Prix Net Art Award, Rhizome, New York (2017). Sekhukhuni is a founding member of the artist group NTU and has worked closely with CUSS Group. Sekhukhuni is co-founder of the design firm INFANT.
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