Body Talk

At the Lund konsthall an exhibition addresses issues of feminism, sexuality and the body, as they play themselves out in the work of a generation of women artists from Africa.

Miriam Syowia Kyambi, <i>Fracture (i)</i>, 2011-15. Performance / installation. Photo © Marko Kivioja, Terhi Vaatti & Anni Kivioja, Kouvola Art Museum Poikilo, Finland. Courtesy the artist
Bringing together artists from different regions of the African continent, “Body Talk” strives to define and articulate notions of feminism and sexuality in the work of women artists whose body (their own or that of others) serves as a tool, a representation or a field of investigation.
In their work, the body manifests itself, whether sequentially or simultaneously, as a model, support, subject or object.
Zoulikha Bouabdellah, <i>L’araignée</i>, 2013. Painted steel, 95 x 137 x 154 cm. Courtesy the artist.
Top: Miriam Syowia Kyambi, Fracture (i), 2011-15. Performance / installation. Photo © Marko Kivioja, Terhi Vaatti & Anni Kivioja, Kouvola Art Museum Poikilo, Finland. Courtesy the artist. Above: Zoulikha Bouabdellah, L’araignée, 2013. Painted steel, 95 x 137 x 154 cm. Courtesy the artist

The critical resonance of a specifically African – and black – feminism, together with the spread of artistic practices in global networks have given shape, since the 1990s, to the development of a black feminist art.

Stemming from the continent and the Diaspora, this black feminist art depicts bodies that continue a tradition of activism and freedom of expression, which it displays with references to historical and political figures, and through the recreation of modern personas, of past and present bodies, all of which the artists appropriate.

<b>Left</b>: Billie Zangewa, <i>The Rebirth of the Black Venus</i>, 2010. Silk tapestry, 127 x 103 cm. Private collection. <b>Right</b>: Billie Zangewa, <i>The Constant Gardener</i>, 2014. Silk tapestry, 127 x 103 cm. Courtesy the artist and Afronova Gallery, Johannesburg.
Left: Billie Zangewa, The Rebirth of the Black Venus, 2010. Silk tapestry, 127 x 103 cm. Private collection. Right: Billie Zangewa, The Constant Gardener, 2014. Silk tapestry, 127 x 103 cm. Courtesy the artist and Afronova Gallery, Johannesburg.

Each of the artists is particular in the way she materially positions her body in a story, and in its rereading, as in a singular space within an increasingly uniform world. It is this unity of purpose in the diversity and subjectivity of forms and answers that “Body Talk” will try to uncover by exhibiting those who expose bodies, or their bodies.

The exhibition presents a combination of newly commissioned and existing works dealing with the issues raised by such exposed bodies. The works of the six participating artists can be seen as so many ways of reexploring, reintegrating and reincarnating the body; in relation to the media of contemporary art.

Miriam Syowia Kyambi, <i>Fracture (i)</i>, 2011-15. Performance / installation. Photo © Marko Kivioja, Terhi Vaatti & Anni Kivioja, Kouvola Art Museum Poikilo, Finland. Courtesy the artist
Miriam Syowia Kyambi, Fracture (i), 2011-15. Performance / installation. Photo © Marko Kivioja, Terhi Vaatti & Anni Kivioja, Kouvola Art Museum Poikilo, Finland. Courtesy the artist

30 May – 27 September 2015
Body Talk
Feminism, Sexuality and the Body in the Work of Six African Women Artists

curated by Koyo Kouoh, 
assisted by Eva Barois De Caevel, RAW Material Company, Dakar
Lunds konsthall
Mårtenstorget 3, Lund

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