After seeing Martha Camarillo’s photographs of horsemen in Strawberry Mansion -an impoverished Philadelphia neighbourhood- Mohamed Bourouissa travelled to see the urban stables run by African American men. For eight months, he observed, drew and photographed this community. As the community and Bourouissa became closer throughout his stay, the artist suggested that they organize a competition, called “Horse Day”, in which artists from other neighborhoods would be invited to create costumes for the horses.
Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)
As she traces the same shape again and again, Ojih Odutola’s lines become darker and deeper, sometimes pushed to the point where their blackness becomes luminous. Set against a blank white background, as in Untitled (2015), Ojih Odutola’s figures are stark, resolute in their darkness. The surface of her subject’s skin becomes ribbon-like, lines weaving across the contours of their head and neck.
In Escaped Lunatic , a steady stream of figures run across the screen, sprinting, jumping, and rolling through the streets of Houston. The work is part of a trilogy that borrows its narrative structure from early-20th-century cinema. The artist employs the chase genre, which has often depicted African Americans in scenes of flight from various forms of authority.
Mohamed Bourouissa became known in the 2000s with a series of photographs on young people in the suburbs of Paris...
Steffani Jemison is an interdisciplinary artist whose work considers issues that arise when conceptual practices are inflected by black history and vernacular culture...
Though born in Nigeria, artist Toyin Ojih Odutola was raised largely in the United States, living in Alabama, California, and now New York...