INFANT: BANNED SKILLS
2025
INFANT: BANNED SKILLS
INFANT, still from BANNED SKILLS 2025
BANNED SKILLS is a nonlinear narrative by the duo INFANT (sidony o’neal and Bogosi Sekhukhuni), the experience of which serves as a portal into their evolving conceptual framework known as XENOFORMALISM (XF). XF is an aesthetic approach to new understandings of cultural representations that uses histories of science fiction and digital culture as 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 XF. First proposed in the 1920s, the 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. 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 left corner of the screen, an interactive virtual music device allows users to switch between kiki- and bouba-coded audio landscapes. The branching sequences of BANNED SKILLS encourage viewers to rethink how meaning is formed and reinforced within art and art history, science and science fiction, and how these disciplines contribute to collective cultural memory.
INFANT is the artist duo sidony o’neal and Bogosi Sekhukhuni.
Conceptual artist sidony o’neal (b. 1988; Seattle, Washington) explores human relationships to objects, labor, and technology. Their work and interdisciplinary research is informed by mathematics, architectural systems, and the histories of objects and has been featured in exhibitions at Et al., San Francisco; Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University, New Jersey; Dracula’s Revenge, New York; Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Oregon; Veronica, Seattle; Third Born, Mexico City; Institute of Contemporary Art, Maine College of Art and Design, Portland; and Sculpture Center, Long Island City, New York. The artist has had residencies at the Masschusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams; and Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Canada, among others. Their performances have been featured at Kunstverein Düsseldorf, Germany; Volksbühne Berlin; and Performance Space, New York. Their awards and fellowships include the Oregon Arts Commission’s Joan Shipley Award (2020) and a Hodder Fellowship from the Lewis Center, Princeton. In 2023, they were awarded a Hallie Ford Fellowship.
Bogosi Sekhukhuni (b. 1991; Johannesburg, South Africa) is an artist and designer who reflects on cultures and histories of technology across mediums such as sculpture, video, set design, furniture design, and performance. 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, United Arab Emirates; The Art Happens Here: Net Art’s Archival Poetics, New Museum, New York; Bogosi Sekhukhuni, Foxy Production (2003–23), New York; Rencontres de Bamako, African Biennale of Photography, Mali; and Simunye Summit 2010, Stevenson Gallery, Johannesburg. Rhizome awarded them the Prix Net Art Award in 2017. Sekhukhuni is a founding member of the artist group NTU and has worked closely with CUSS Group.
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