According to a press release, “Speaking Back seeks to reveal deeply significant dimensions of culture and subjectivity, history and struggle, by bringing women together as diverse artists to find out what each in her artistically signified yet gendered/racial/sexual/cultural singularity is offering to the world, to us all.”
At the May 23rd opening, Nigerian-American artist and LGBT activist Adejoke Tugbiyele performed her Freedom Dance for the very first time. A visceral and defiant work of self-expression and bellowing drumming, the conceptual piece saw Adejoke challenge gender roles and contentions within queer Africa through dress, lighting and sheer force.
Though visitors might no longer be able to see Adejoke’s performance, they can still catch South African artist Tracy Rose’s video installation attempt to disrupt the male-dominated revolutionary space, as well as the New York-based Mickalene Thomas’ intimate documentary exploring her mother as her muse.
Covering the gallery’s walls are the extra-terrestrial, fragmented drawings of Nigerian artist ruby onyinyechi amanze, who uses paper as a medium to remember, layer, hide and reveal aspects of interpersonal stories.
Virginia Chihota, the root of the flower we do not know (mudzi weruva ratisingazive), 2014. screenprint on paper. 120 x 80cm.
Virginia Chihota, the root of the flower we do not know (mudzi weruva ratisingazive), 2014. screenprint on paper. 120 x 80cm.
ruby onyinechi amanze, Chasing relentlessly after fading things- The Birth of BLACK, audre marries its indigenous self- Shadows validate existence (ada and Twin find ground), (2014). 80 inches/203.2cm (6.66 Feet) x 208 inches/528.32cm (17.33 Feet).
