G U E S S W H O ’ S C O M I N G T O
D I N N E R ?
R I C H A R D TA I T T I N G E R G A L L E RY
Š 2015, Richard Taittinger Gallery New York
G u e s s W h o ’s C o m i n g t o D i n n e r ? J U LY 1 6
– AUGUST 22,
2015
HALIDA BOUGHRIET GOPAL DAGNOGO SAM HOPKINS ONYEKA IBE AMINA MENIA CHIKA MODUM AIDA MULUNEH CHIKE OBEAGU AMALIA RAMANANKIRAHINA EPHREM SOLOMON UCHE UZORKA BEATRICE WANJIKU
C U RAT E D BY UGOCHUKWU-SMOOTH C.
NZEWI
I n t ro d u c t i o n Folks can’t seem to come to terms with the fact that African artists have now taken and secured their seat at the dinner table, invited or not! —Chika Okeke-Agulu 1
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? borrows its title from Sidney Poitier’s 1967 epic comedy-drama film, a fitting metaphor, in reference to the astute observation of art historian Chika Okeke-Agulu that African artists have indeed mastered the realpolitiks of contemporary art and can now be counted as legitimate stakeholders. They have invited themselves to the dinner table of the international mainstream on their own terms. This process of enunciation began in the 1990s, a period characterized by the politics of representation, in response to the unfolding globalization and neoliberal multiculturalism. This year marks an important milestone with Nigerian-born Okwui Enwezor’s 56 th Venice Biennale, aptly titled All the World’s Futures, showcasing an impressive number of African artists. Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? celebrates this unfolding development without losing sight of the fact that the growing acceptance of contemporary art by African artists is a work in progress. In this light, the exhibition presents works by Halida Boughriet, Gopal Dagnogo, Sam Hopkins, Onyeka Ibe, Amina Menia, Chika Modum, Aida Muluneh, Chike Obeagu, Amalia Ramanankirahina, Ephrem Solomon, Unche Uzorka, and Beatrice Wanjiku. Though plugged into the circuits of the
international art world, they are not yet well-known in the somewhat insular New York art world. While the understanding of contemporary art has taken on a capacious nature as an all-inclusive gesture to mirror the multiple temporalities that attend our world today, one observes that the work of a majority of artists from Africa is still read against the grain of how it reflects culture or context-specific values. Hence, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? takes this peculiar system of value as its conceptual basis. Although it is arguable that notions such as fetish or primitivism no longer shape the understanding of African art, still much of the expectation is that contemporary artists of Africa should at least convey a sense of the continent. Through the works on display, the exhibition problematizes the burden of “Africanness,” understood as cultural aesthetics, which continues to inform the reception of contemporary art by African artists in the Western and international imaginary. It is important to illuminate that the twelve exhibiting artists do not disavow their connections to Africa, either as a place of birth or a context of immense signification. Chika Okeke-Agulu, “African Artists Have Now Taken and Secured Their Seat at the Dinner Table, Invited or Not!” Contemporary And. n.d.
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Their individual works address Africa, but as a vehicle with which they contemplate our changing times. They reflect localized experiences, histories and conditions that intersect with the global, transnational, and universal from the artists’ varied positions. The fifty-two works on view demonstrate the intimate contexts that inspire the artists and the sense of internationalism that attend contemporary artistic practice. Such complex forms of critical engagement are increasingly referred to as the global contemporary by art historians and curators alike. 2 Amina Menia focuses on Algeria’s recent past that is fraught with colonial violence and anti-colonial pushback, marked by war traumas which feed postcolonial anxiety and fear of the unknown and at the same time, nourish contemporary Algerian nationalism. Her work in the exhibition is a selection from the ongoing photography series entitled Chrysanthèmes (Chrysanthemums), which she began in 2009. The photographs capture the commemorative stelae and monuments dedicated to martyrs who laid down their lives in service to Algeria, particularly during the Algerian War of Independence (1954–1962). Similarly, Uche Uzorka’s Hans Belting , “Contemporary Art as Global Art: A Critical Estimate,” The Global Art World: Audiences, Markets, and Museums, ed. Hans Belting and Andrea Buddensieg (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2009), 38-71.
affective ink drawings connect the past and the present. His Alien Citizen, Alien Indigene (2014) explores the challenges of nation building. It takes the bloody civil war of 1966–1970, a dark chapter in Nigeria’s history, as its point of departure in addressing more recent examples of bloodletting and violence. His other works, Also Known as No Place like Home (Tear and Wear) (2014), One Night’s Crossing of Color and Dream (2014), and Ascension to Space (2015), explore processes of urban street culture and draw attention to the artist’s compelling mixed media approach that involves painting, collage, cutting and pasting, charcoal, and ink drawing. Ephrem Solomon, Sam Hopkins, and Gopal Dagnogo focus on the political, social, and economic dynamics in Africa in different ways. Solomon’s woodcuts address power relations between politicians and the public. Though working with conventional mediums and a limited color palette, Solomon’s minimalist figural and geometric compositions are visually straightforward yet arresting. His works are often created in series, such as those in the exhibition that are drawn from his new Forbidden Fruit series (2015). Sam Hopkins examines the mushrooming industry of NGOs in
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Africa with Logos of Non Profit Organisations working in Kenya (some of which are imaginary) (2010–ongoing). He presents a wide assortment of these NGOs and their diverging missions through their logo designs in an installation comprised of several examples and those he invented. The installation is a remarkable critique of the NGO industry in Kenya that is spiraling out of control. Dagnogo’s mixed media paintings combine figural, geometric, and abstract elements; some are drawn from traditional African sculptures and others from everyday objects or artifacts with active social lives. With politically charged titles such as Waiting the Vote of the Beasts, no. 1 (2014), and End of an Era No. 4 (2014), Dagnogo draws attention to his sustained interest and engagement with events in his home country of Ivory Coast, especially the political crisis that was resolved in the last few years, from his position of expatriation in Paris. Beatrice Wanjiku and Amalia Ramanankirahina draw from a deeply personal space, and autobiographic and collective histories, respectively. Wanjiku’s art locates a delicate balance between human consciousness, how reality is imagined, and how it actually manifests. Employing a language of figural abstraction and muted color palettes, she addresses the pressure to conform to traditional conventions and societal expectations such as marriage, love, childbearing, relating it to her own personal experiences as a single, female artist living and working in Nairobi in in The Sentiment of the Flesh III (2015), The Sentiment of the Flesh IV (2015),
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and The Strangeness of my Madness IV (2015). Ramanankirahina’s photographic series entitled Portraits de Famille (Familly Portraits) (2013) charts a historical biography of her family and its intersection with the colonial history of her home country of Madagascar. Her work Le Jardin d’Essai (Garden Tests) (2013) addresses memory and history as it relates to French colonialism and its aftermath. The Bois de Vincennes was created in 1899 as a site of agronomic experimentation with exotic plants from French imperial holdings. At the French colonial exhibition of 1907, the garden was transformed into five colonial villages comprising Indochina, Madagascar, Congo, Sudan, and Tuareg. Today, the garden is largely forgotten and in ruins, yet remains a monument to imperialism and colonial expansion. Aida Muluneh’s series The Wolf You Feed (2014) addresses the meaning of blackness in the age of multiculturalism and globalization vis-à-vis the staying power of racism. The work was inspired by the experience of the Brazilian footballer Dani Alves of Futbol Club Barcelona, who during a soccer match was racially abused and had a banana hurled at him by a fan of the opposing team. Working with settings and spaces inspired by Flemish painter Johannes Vermeer’s indoor scenes and Western pictorial traditions in Diner des anonymes (2014), Bichromie au regard Trompeur (2014), and Les enfants de la République (2014), from her Pandora series, Halida Boughreit presents a remarkable insight on the challenges of belonging and acceptance faced by
African immigrants and their first-generation French children. On a similar note, Chika Modum’s recent project Outer-Shell, from which her works in the exhibition are drawn, explores photographic images as prints of skin collected from different ethnic, racial, and social spaces, which are then fashioned into garments and accessories. With this series, Modum highlights the complexity of identity, forms of social identification, and labelling. New York-based Onyeka Ibe deploys a language of colorful abstraction and conceptualism in Double Walls (2015), Identity (Self-Portrait 1) (2014), and Crumbling Walls (2013). The three works are recent experiments with African architectural forms and built space. Working with earthy colors and thick slabs of recycled oil paints, he creates voluminous paintings that appear sculptural on a formal level. Chike Obeagu has a peculiar approach to depicting figural forms by exaggerating facial features such as eyes and lips. They appear engorged, adding a surreal dimension to his compositions. His work is often configured as narratives that reflect cultural, social, political, and economic concerns, and at times, laced with humor. His interest in everyday experiences, the banal as well as the poignant, is apparent in Private Viewing (2015), Isi Ewu na Nkwobi (2015), and What It Takes To Get a Pet Name (2014).
art is defined by a desire to be in the contemporary…[and is] the recognition of the dual right of artists to maintain an active presence in a local context and participate in transnational dialogues.”3 This coda, which I refer to as context or space of familiarity, is the base point from which the exhibiting artists offer subjective responses to extant social experiences, postcolonial conditions, as well as articulate their presence in a global world. Africa is neither a label nor a badge of identity. Instead, for Amina Menia, Aida Muluneh, Chike Obeagu, Ephrem Solomon, Uche Uzorka, and Beatrice Wanjiku, who live and work from the continent, it is an existential space of experience and extant memory. And for Halida Boughriet, Gopal Dagnogo, Sam Hopkins, Onyeka Ibe, Chika Modum, and Amalia Ramanankirahina, who live and work from elsewhere, they return to Africa as some sort of archive of received, imagined, or lived experience and memory, filtered through their realities of exile, migration, and dislocation. Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? invites the New York audience to encounter the full force of artistic contemporaneity, the rich variety of media, and diversity of artistic approach as shown in the works on view. Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi curator
For those seeking a tangible Africa, there is none in the works of these artists. To paraphrase cultural theorist Nikos Papastergiadis, “the coda of contemporary Nikos Papastergiadis, “Spatial Aesthetics: Rethinking the contemporary,” Antinomies of Art and Culture: Modernity, Postmodernity, Contemporaneity, ed. Terry Smith, Okwui Enwezor, and Nancy Condee (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008), 363-364.
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Halida Boughriet B. 1980,
FRANCE
Born in Paris to Algerian parents, Halida Boughriet trained at l’École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France. She subsequently trained in cinematography at New York’s School of Visual Arts from 2004 to 2005. Working in a broad range of mediums, including photography, film, sculpture, installation, and mixed media, Boughriet explores the power dynamics and violence that mark human relationships, drawing upon her Arabic and Western cultural backgrounds. Her experimental practice spotlights those who live on the margins of society. She has shown in several exhibitions, art fairs, festivals, and biennials. Her recent exhibitions include New Cinema and
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Contemporary Art, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2015); Art Cities and Landscapes, King’s Lynn, UK (2015); the 11 th Dak’Art Biennale, Dakar, Senegal (2014); My Sister who Travels, Mosaic Rooms, London (2014); Rising Images, Carte blanche à Lowave, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2013); Le Corps Découvert, Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris (2013); and FIAC Alger, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Algeria (2011). In 2012, she was awarded the Cutlog Prize at the International Video Festival in Paris. She is also the winner of the 10 th LVMH Photography Prize in 2004. Her works are in the collection of Centre Pompidou, Paris and Mac Val Museum, Vitry-surSeine, France.
Diner des anonymes from the series Pandora, 2014. Chromogenic color print, 32.6 x 50 in. (82.9 x 127 cm).
Bichromie au regard Trompeur from the series Pandora, 2014. Chromogenic color print, 32.6 x 50 in. (82.9 x 127 cm).
Les enfants de la Rèpublique from the series Pandora, 2014. Chromogenic color print, 32.6 x 50 in. (82.9 x 127 cm).
Gopal Dagnogo B. 1973,
IVORY COAST
Born in Abidjan, Ivory Coast to an Ivorian father and a French mother, Gopal Dagnogo moved to Bordeaux, France in 1991 for art training. In 1997, he moved back to West Africa, settling in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, to learn traditional bronze techniques. After three years, he moved back to France, settling in Paris. He could not return to the Ivory Coast due to the political crisis and civil war that engulfed the country for most part of the 1990s and 2000s. His mixed media painting has provided an outlet to make sense of these events and remain connected to his
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country of birth and Africa. Dagnogo has participated in numerous exhibitions at major venues in Africa, Europe, the United States, and Asia. His recent international exhibitions include the 11 th Dak’Art Biennale, Dakar, Senegal (2014); 1st Biennale of Kampala, Uganda (2014); the 5 th Maiden Tour International Festival, Bakou, Azerbaïdjan (2014); and International Painting Biennale of Chisinau, Moldova (2013). He has participated in numerous artists residency programs, including the Art Omi New York (2014). His works are included in public and private collections, such as the Modern Art Museum of Kuwait City, Kuwait.
End of an Era Nยบ4, 2014. Acrylic, pastel on canvas, 58.9 x 58.9 in. (149.5 x 149.5 cm).
Waiting the Vote of the Beasts, 2014. Acrylic, pastel on canvas, 58.9 x 58.9 in. (149.5 x 149.5 cm).
Waiting the Vote of the Beasts (detail), 2014. Acrylic, pastel on canvas, 58.9 x 58.9 in. (149.5 x 149.5 cm).
Sam Hopkins B. 1979,
I TA LY
Sam Hopkins is an artist and curator whose work responds to the specific social and political context within which he is living, exploring and re-imagining elements of daily life. As his practice is triggered by a context, it exhibits a broad spectrum of both media and content. Much of his work orbits around issues of public space and the negotiation of participatory practice. Critical to this engagement is a keen attentiveness to the ways in which the media produces realities, as opposed to simply transmitting them. Hopkins grew up between Kenya and England, studying art in England, Cuba, and Germany, before returning to Nairobi,
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Kenya in 2006. He has participated in a broad spectrum of local and international exhibitions, including Once Upon a Time, Markarere University, Kampala, Uganda (2014); 11th Dak’Art Biennale, Dakar, Senegal (2014); Poznan Meditations Biennale, Poznan, Poland (2014); The Urban Culture of Global Prayers, NGBK, Berlin, Germany (2011); and Afropolis, RautenstrauchJoest Museum, Cologne, Germany (2010). He is currently a PhD candidate at the University of the Arts London and works as a Kulturstiftung des Bundes Fellow at the Iwalewahaus Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Germany. He was recently named one of the 100 Leading Global Thinkers of 2014 by Foreign Policy Magazine.
Logos of Non Profit Organizations working in Kenya (some of which are imaginary) (installation view), 2010–ongoing. Silkscreen prints, artist’s frames, 31.5 x 90.5 in. (80 x 230 cm).
Logos of Non Profit Organizations working in Kenya (some of which are imaginary) (detail), 2010–ongoing. Silkscreen prints, artist ’s frames, 7.9 x 7.9 in. (20 x 20 cm).
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Onyeka Ibe B. 1971,
NIGERIA
Onyeka Ibe earned a BFA in Painting from the University of Benin, Nigeria, where he graduated in 1996 with a First Class (summa cum laude). In 1998, he relocated to the United States and continued his studies for an MFA at Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA and Pratt Institute in New York. Currently based in New York, Ibe’s recent work engages indigenous forms and content in African art and architecture as conceptual backdrop. He uses dark, earthy colors, fragments of found objects, and recycled paints to create sculptural installations and multi-layered paintings. Having been raised in West Africa, he reflects on his childhood experiences growing up
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in Eastern Nigeria. His work explores the traditional architecture of using low-grade sand and mud for houses. While the middle and upper classes built their homes out of higher quality materials, the poor relied on mud, slats, wooden poles, and found materials for constructing their homes. These houses were meant only to provide shelter from wind and rain. His longstanding interest in issues surrounding identity intersects with this recent conceptual focus on traditional architectural forms from West Africa. He has exhibited internationally at major venues, and his work is included in many public and private collections in the United States and abroad.
Double Walls, 2015. Steel mesh, oil on canvas, 72 x 120 x 2.2 in. (182.9 x 304.8 x 5.7 cm).
Crumbling Walls, 2013. Steel mesh, acrylic on wood, 48 x 60 x 72 in. (121.9 x 152.4 x 182.9 cm).
Identity (Self Portrait 1), 2014. Steel mesh, oil on canvas, 48 x 36 in. (121.9 x 91.4 cm).
Amina Menia B. 1 976, A LG E R I A
Amina Menia trained at the Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Algeria, majoring in Interior Design. Her work consists of urban installations, photography, sculpture, and film that reflect her interest in architecture, history, built spaces, and social memory. From the onset of her career, Menia was fascinated by Algiers, Algeria’s capital, as a place of fraught memory and was drawn to concrete structures, public spaces, and images that monumentalize (à la Pierre Nora) or serve as vectors for Algeria’s historical experiences. Deploying a minimalist lexicon, she underlines historical places, revisits urban legends, points out urban gaps, and probes social changes with ephemeral interventions and daily urban practices. With her series
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Chrysanthèmes (Chrysanthemums) (2009– ongoing), she proposes a photographic installation in frontal relation with the viewer where she documents abandoned monuments charged with history. Her work has been shown internationally at major venues including the Museum of Modern Art of Algiers, Algeria; Carthage National Museum, Tunisia; Museum of Contemporary Art, Marseilles, France; Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin, Ireland; and Museum of African Design, Johannesburg, South Africa. She participated in the Triennale Brugge, Belgium (2015); 11th Dak’Art Biennale, Dakar, Senegal (2014); Folkstone Triennial, UK (2014); and 11th Sharjah Biennale, United Arab Emirates (2013).
Sidi Maarouf from the series Chrysanthèmes, 2009–present. Inkjet print on cotton rag paper, 22.4 x 30.7 in. (57 x 78 cm).
Ziama from the series Chrysanthèmes, 2009–present. Inkjet print on cotton rag paper, 22.4 x 18.5 in. (57 x 47 cm).
Grarem from the series Chrysanthèmes, 2009–present. Inkjet print on cotton rag paper, 22.4 x 18.5 in. (57 x 47 cm).
Chika Modum B. 1980,
NIGERIA
Chika Modum earned a BA in Fine and Applied Arts from the University of Nigeria (2003), and an MFA in Sculpture from the University of Calgary, Canada (2012). Modum draws upon familiar processes and textures from West Africa, where she was born, and North America, her most recent place of residence. In her recent project Outer-Shell, she explores photographic images as prints of skin collected from different ethnic, racial and social spaces, then fashioned into garments and accessories. Investigating the relationships between pieces of apparel, she illuminates ideas of cohabitation, segregation, isolation, dominance and submission.
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In 2009, she was included in the Younger than Jesus: Artists Directory published by the New Museum, New York. Her works have exhibited at The Art Gallery of Alberta, Canada; TRUCK Gallery, Calgary, Canada; and The New Gallery, Calgary, Canada. She has participated in numerous international exhibitions, including the 10th Dak’A rt Biennale, Dakar, Senegal (2012). She was recently included in the UK Aesthetica Magazine’s Art Prize Anthology, “100 Contemporary Artists” (March 2013). Modum was the recipient of Edmonton Arts Council’s Cultural Diversity in the Arts Grant and The Queen Elizabeth II Award.
The Tie of Allegiance, 2015. Digital print on silk and cotton fabric, cotton bow tie, plastic buttons, thread, 19.7 x 19.7 in. (50 x 50 cm).
Piercings 1, 2015. Digital print on fabric, safety pins, 19.7 x 19.7 in. (50 x 50 cm).
Familiar, 2015. Digital print on silk and cotton fabric, thread, Velcro, 19.7 x 19.7 in. (50 x 50 cm).
Aida Muluneh B . 1 9 74 ,
ETHIOPIA
Born in Ethiopia, Aida Muluneh left the country at a young age during the difficult years of the Derg military dictatorship. She spent an itinerant childhood between Yemen and England. After several years in a boarding school in Cyprus, she settled in Canada in 1985. In 2000, she graduated with a BA in Communications from Howard University, Washington, DC, majoring in Film and Photography. After working for several years as a photojournalist with the Washington Post while maintaining a parallel practice as a visual artist, she moved back to Ethiopia and established the Addis Photo Festival, foremost international platform for photography in Africa. Muluneh is widely
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published, and her work can be found in several permanent collections, including the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art, Washington, DC and the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH. She is a recipient of several fellowships and awards, including CRAF International Photography Award, Spilimbergo, Italy (2010) and European Union Prize of the Rencontres Africaines de la Photographie, Bamako, Mali (2007). Muluneh continues to curate and develop cultural projects with local and internantional institutions through her company DESTA (Developing and Educating Society through Art) and for Africa Creative Consulting PLC (DFA) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
The Wolf You Feed 1, 2014. Digital chromogenic print on cotton rag, 31.5 x 31.5 in. (80 x 80 cm).
The Wolf You Feed 2, 2014. Digital chromogenic print on cotton rag, 31.5 x 31.5 in. (80 x 80 cm).
The Wolf You Feed 3, 2014. Digital chromogenic print on cotton rag, 31.5 x 31.5 in. (80 x 80 cm).
C h i ke O b e a g u B. 1975,
NIGERIA
Chike Obeagu received his BA and MFA in Painting from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria (1998 and 2003, respectively). An untiring experimentalist, Obeagu developed his photo-collage technique in his final year of art school when a lack of resources and financial means pushed him to seek cheap and easily accessible materials. His technique involves a seamless melding of colorful magazine and billboard poster cutouts with acrylic and oil paints, such that it is not always easy to tell where paper meets paint. In his compositions, he creates depth by carefully playing with scale, perception, and color. An embossed effect is achieved through his use of thick slabs of acrylic paint to outline his human characters, built structures, and other forms, and to break
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the picture surface into grids or panels of vistas. He has a peculiar approach to depicting figural forms by exaggerating some of the features such as eyes and lips. They appear engorged, adding a surreal dimension to his compositions. His works are often composed as narratives that reflect cultural, social, political, and economic concerns, and are at times laced with humor. He is interested in everyday experiences—the banal as well as the poignant. His themes range from human interaction, music, religion, prostitution on street corners, love and relationships, arson, highway robbery, to historical events such as colonialism and the advent of Christianity in Nigeria. Obeagu presently teaches painting at the Department of Visual and Creative Arts, Federal University Lafia, Nassarawa State, Nigeria.
What It Takes to Get a Pet Name, 2014. Arcylic, paper on canvas, 41.7 x 31.9 in. (106 x 81 cm).
Isi Ewu Na Nkowbi, 2015. Acrylic, paper on canvas, 64.8 x 81.6 in. (164.5 x 207 cm).
Private Viewing, 2015. Acrylic, paper on canvas, 63.8 x 77.9 in. (162 x 198 cm).
Amalia Ramanakarihi n a B. 1963,
MADAGASCAR
Amalia Ramanankirahina is a FrenchMalagasy artist who works in a variety of media, including painting, ink, photography, and installation. Her choice of material, technique, and art form is informed by the exhibition concept, specific location, or context of a project. She has a diploma in Cultural Heritage, and a Master of Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Property, both from University Paris I, Panthéon Sorbonne, Paris. Since 1990, she has maintained parallel careers as a conservator and restorer of painting, and a lecturer in art history and heritage practice. She is widely published and has lectured at institutions such as University of Paris I, University of Marne-
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La-Vallée, School of Graphics Research, Brussels, Belgium; and the National Heritage Institute, INP, Aubervilliers, Paris, where she is currently affiliated. Ramanankirahina’s recent work addresses the relationship between memory, history, and cultural heritage through the lens of her personal experience and cultural background. However, she opens up her work to multiple readings. Her recent exhibitions include Culture Night, Vilnius, Lithuania (2015); International Maiden Tower Festival, Baku, Azerbaijan (2015); Les Revenants, Bordeaux, France (2015); Migrations et citoyennetés, Larocafé, 93 France (2014); and the 9 th and 10 th Dak’Art Biennale, Dakar, Senegal (2010, 2012).
Le Jardin d’essai (Garden Test) series, 2013. India ink on crystal paper, (each) 16.5 x 14.4 in. (42 x 36.5 cm).
Nenibe 3 from the series Portraits de Famille (Family Portraits), 2013. Color photograph, 19.2 x 15.4 in. (48.8 x 39.2 cm).
PH R from the series Portraits de Famille (Family Portraits), 2013. Color photograph, 19.2 x 15.4 in. (48.8 x 39.2 cm).
E p h re m S o l o m o n B. 1983,
ETHIOPIA
Ephrem Solomon graduated from the Entoto Art School, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in 2009. He observes and presents sociopolitical works using woodcut and mixed media. Views of the city and the people that inhabit the spaces around him inform his work, as does a fictional world that exists beyond the present. Using black and white to symbolize this ambiguous juncture in reality, he produces bold figures and portraits that capture both personal and public power relations in society. Solomon has exhibited internationally including Ethiopia, Kenya, Dubai and Croatia. In 2014, he had his first solo exhibition in the Untied Kingdom at Tiwani Contemporary, London. His work is
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included in private collections in Dubai, Kenya, South Africa and the United Kingdom, including the Saatchi Collection. His Forbidden Fruit series (2014) presented in the exhibition explores and celebrates the importance of living in the moment. The figures that look to the left, are focused on the past; those facing the right are looking to the future, whilst those facing the front are confronting the present. The repetitive motifs resemble natural patterns found in nature, where the beginning and end are difficult to establish. From birth to death, life’s journey creates shapes as decisions, coincidences and accidents take place.
Untitled from the series Forbidden Fruit, 2014. Oil, woodcut on panel, 25.2 x 25.2 in. (64 x 64 cm).
Untitled from the series Forbidden Fruit, 2014. Oil, woodcut on panel, 31.5 x 31.5 in. (80 x 80 cm).
Untitled from the series Forbidden Fruit, 2014. Oil, woodcut on panel, 37.4 x 33.5 in. (95 x 85 cm).
Uche Uzorka B . 1 9 74 ,
NIGERIA
Uche Uzorka studied at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, majoring in Painting. His practice incorporates painting, collage, cutting and pasting, charcoal, and ink drawing in an examination of the processes of urban street culture. He has also engaged with the archive as an artistic process and was recently involved in a two-part artist residency at the University of Bayreuth’s Iwalewa Haus, Germany in 2014 and 2015, where he explored issues of appropriations and re-signification, systems of value and meaning making, time, archaeology, and documentation, around the museum’s collection of African art.
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Uzorka has held four solo shows in Nigeria and Germany, and participated in many group exhibitions internationally. They include It Felt Strange to Pay for Nigerian Food, Savvy Contemporary, Berlin, Germany (2014); Where were you when I was here?, Sübkültür and the Africa Centre, University of Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Germany (2014); Line. Sign. Symbol, African Artists Foundation, Lagos, Nigeria (2013); Integration and Resistance, 10th Biennale of Havana, Havana, Cuba (2010); and Dialogue Among Civilizations, Art For Humanity, Durban, South Africa (2009).
Also Known as No Place Like Home (Tear and Wear), 2015. Cotton fabric on canvas, 47.9 x 71 in. (121.6 x 180.3 cm).
Alien Indigene, Alien Citizen, 2014. Ink and pen on Arches watercolor paper, 45 x 39 in. (114 x 99 cm).
One Night’s Crossing of Colour and Dream, 2015. Ink and pen on Arches watercolor paper, 44.9 x 44.9 in. (114 x 114 cm).
B e a t r i c e Wa n j i k u B. 1978,
K E N YA
Beatrice Wanjiku lives and works in Nairobi, Kenya. Working mostly as a painter but with a diverse range of media, Wanjiku explores consciousness and self-awareness as the inherent ability to transform circumstances. Her mixed media figural abstraction paintings, which emerge from a deep internal space, offer delicate insight on the intersection of consciousness and how reality is imagined. Her recent Strait Jacket series (2015), some of which are included in the exhibition, explores the ways in which traditional notions or systems of values impose expectations or pressures on the individual as he or she negotiates what it means to be a productive member of society. Wanjiku has exhibited her work extensively in Africa, Europe, and the United States.
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Her recent exhibitions include The OSTRALE 2015, Dresden, Germany (2015); Concerning the Internal, Circle Art Agency, Nairobi (2015); and Meaning Africa, Devearts Weissenbruchzaal, Pulchri Studio, Hague, the Netherlands (2013). She is a recipient of the UNESCO Aschberg Bursary (2013); Lava Thomas and Peter Danzig Fellowship Award (2013); Robert Sterling Clarke Foundation Fellowship (2011); and Alliance Francaise’s and Goethe-Institut’s Most Promising Female Artist Award (2006). Her recent international artists’ residencies include the Iwalewa Haus Artist Residency Program, Bayreuth, Germany (2015), Djerassi Resident Artist Program, Woodside, CA (2013), and Vermont Studio Center Program, Johnson, VT (2011).
The Strangeness of my Madness IV, 2015. Acrylic, pastel on canvas, 23.5 x 27.5 in. (58.9 x 69.8 cm).
The Sentiment of the Flesh III, 2015. Acrylic, pastel on canvas, 58.5 x 39.2 in. (148.6 x 99.7 cm).
The Sentiment of the Flesh IV, 2015. Acrylic, pastel on canvas, 52.4 x 62 in. (134.3 x 157.5 cm).
A B O U T T H E C U RATO R
Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi is an artist, art historian, and curator of African art at the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH. He holds a BA in Fine and Applied Arts from the University of Nigeria Nsukka, Nigeria, a postgraduate diploma in Museum and Heritage Studies from the University of Western Cape, South Africa, and a PhD in Art History from Emory University, Atlanta, GA. Nzewi is a recipient of several academic fellowships, scholarships, and artists’ awards, including a Rockefeller Foundation Grant Award, TIAA-CREF Ruth Simms Hamilton Fellowship, Smithsonian Institution Fellowship, and Robert Sterling Clark Foundation Fellowship. He has curated major exhibitions in Nigeria, South Africa, United States, and more recently, the 11 th edition of the Dak’Art Biennale, Dakar, Senegal, foremost platform for contemporary art in Africa (2014); Art of Weapons (2014); Auto-graphics: Works by Victor Ekpuk (2015); and Ukara: Ritual
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Cloth of the Ekpe Secret Society (2015). As a practicing artist, Nzewi has exhibited widely in numerous international artists’ residencies and workshops. His work is in both public and private collections, including the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington, DC and Newark Museum, Newark, NJ. His recent essays include “The Individual and Community: Aesthetics of Blackness i n t h e Wo r k s of T h re e B l a c k B r i t i s h Artists,” Critical Interventions (2013), “The Contemporary Present and Modernist Past in Postcolonial African Art,” World Art, (2013), and “In the Long Shadows of Euro-America, or, What is Global Contemporary?,” African Arts, (2015). He is co-editor of New Spaces for Negotiating Art (and) Histories ( 2015), a book on independent art initiatives in Africa. Nzewi was an adjunct professor in the Art History Department for the 2014–2015 academic session at Dartmouth College.
R I C H A R D TA I T T I N G E R G A L L E R Y
Embracing its prime location in the Lower East Side as a new cultural and artistic center in New York, Richard Taittinger Gallery presents an ambitious program dedicated to fostering critical dialogues between artists, viewers, and institutions. The mission of the gallery is to present a program of intellectually stimulating and visually compelling exhibitions that address pertinent topics in contemporary art throughout the year, with a special focus during the summer season. Working closely with a distinguished curator, the gallery is pleased to develop a museumquality exhibition with strong conceptual basis to bring the works of rising artistic talents from Africa to the forefront of the contemporary New York art scene.
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P u b l i s h e d by R i c h a rd Ta i t t i n g e r G a l l e r y i n c o n j u n c t i o n w i t h t h e ex h i b i t i o n G u e s s W h o’s Co m i n g to D i n n e r? J u l y 1 6 - Au g u s t 2 2 , 2 0 1 5 R i c h a rd Ta i t t i n g e r G a l l e r y 1 5 4 Lu d l ow S t re e t N ew Yo r k , N Y 1 0 0 0 2 r i c h a rd ta i t t i n g e r.c o m T +1 ( 2 1 2 ) 6 3 4 -7 1 5 4 F +1 ( 2 1 2 ) 6 3 4 -7 1 5 5 All images © the artist A l l tex t © t h e c u ra to r C u ra to r U g o c h u kw u -S m o o t h C . N zew i Ed i t i n g a n d D e s i g n D a n i e l l e Wu
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GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER? J U LY 1 6
– AUGUST 22,
2015