Exhibitions

Evan Ifekoya: She was a Full Body Speaker is still on view on Copperfield website until June 15, 2020

The energy, rhythm and vibrancy that draw us into the film are universal, enticing, and nostalgic. While the recurring motifs of the disco ball and the sound system speak to club spaces across the world, the artist carves out their own individuated narrative, drawing on deeply personal archives, spliced with the footage of Sandi Hughes—a feminist filmmaker, DJ and poet whose videos from the 1970–90s record Liverpool’s nightclub scenes, community events and national political protests. A considered intertextuality emboldens the work, creating new and relevant intersections within contemporary culture. Though certain details are personal, moments of anecdotal refrain, it is the broadly relatable recurring imagery and rhythms underpinning the film that grants the audience access into a potential place of greater understanding. Marginalized narratives of blackness, queerness and their darker counterparts, racism, homophobia and sexism are unapologetically placed next to one another, exposed, bar by bar, beat by beat.

Serigne Ibrahima Dieye: Paraboles d’un règne sauvage is still on view at Cécile Fakhoury Gallery in Abidjan, Ivory Coast until June 27, 2020

In a converted space, aiming at disturbing the visitor’s spatial bearings, Serigne Ibrahima Dieye proposes a series of paintings, works on paper as well as an immersive installation, in the continuation of his reflections on the political and social landscape of our contemporary societies. In the manner of a visual fable, the artist depicts the story of a confrontation between characters masked as animals, whose thirst for power, selfishness and obscure motivations evoke a certain category of world rulers. Serigne Ibrahima Dieye installs this contemporary jungle in the heart of the gallery space, inhabits it with threatening anthropomorphic allegories and carries the visitor into the depths of this hostile universe. Serigne Ibrahima Dieye thus forces us to face the aberrations of our societies head-on and unadorned. The artist pushes us to reflect on our role in the world’s shaping, on our share of individual responsibility, while making the creative gesture a privileged act of resilience towards the abyss.

Arthur Jafa: A Series of Utterly Improbable, Yet Extraordinary Renditions is still on view at Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art in Porto, Portugal until June 21, 2020

Known as a filmmaker, cinematographer and artist, Arthur Jafa presents in the exhibition the works that he has been making as a visual artist for the past two decades. In his cinematic work, Jafa makes present the image of African-American identity and culture through a broad spectrum of contemporary footage and found images. He attempts to relay the history of the Afro-American visual aesthetics and help reframe this question in a new context. In his assemblage of fragments of popular icons, major events of the Black history and anonymous bodies in various states of exaltation and despair, Jafa brings a synthesizing view of the American experience of the Black community, while seeking to make visible—or emancipate—the power embedded in modes of African expression with reference points ranging from Fang sculpture to Mississippi juke joints, Duchamp’s urinal to jazz.

Art Fairs

Art Paris 2020 is still on view online on Artsy website until June 20, 2020

Art Paris announces an evolution in its partnership with Artsy, which will be presenting an online edition of the fair. Collectors are invited to an exclusive preview on May 25th and 26th on Art Paris’s microsite, before it opens to the general public on May 27th. Throughout the event, new and original content will be added to the Art Paris profile on Artsy’s website. Thanks to a range of digital tools and applications, Art Paris Live presents an immersive and interactive visit experience, which you will find on the micro-sites of exhibiting galleries. The 2020 edition, which should have brought together 150 galleries from 20 different countries, presents a critical and subjective overview of the French scene with a selection of 22 artists curated by Gaël Charbau around the notions of narrative and the juxtaposition of unique and universal stories, while a focus, led by Carolina Grau, will explore the identity and diversity of the Iberian Peninsula.

Screenings

Black Women as/and the Living Archive is still on view online at Washington Project for the Arts website until June 13, 2020

“Black Women as/and the Living Archive” is a virtual film, performance, and talk series aimed at initiating a conversation about the modes in which Black women encode, preserve, and share memory through community. Central to Makonnen’s inquiry is “Children of NAN: Mothership”, a recent film by Alisha Wormsley that functions as a metaphor for the survival and power of Black women in a dystopic future. Over the course of six weeks, Makonnen will bring together Wormsley and many of the cast and collaborators of “Children of NAN: Mothership” for a film screening, a reading, two performances, and a discussion. The participants include artists Li Harris, Autumn Knight, Jasmine Hearn, Jamila Raegan, and curator, Ingrid LaFleur. Additionally, Ola Ronke, creator of The Free Black Women’s Library, contributes an annotated bibliography of five books, inspired by Wormsley’s film.