Group Show: The Message is the Medium

About

“Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it.” - Frantz Fanon

At its core, The Medium is the Message is an exhibition concerned with pigment over pigmentation. It is primarily about the power artistic pigment holds when trying to express an identity free of cliche. The exhibition takes this focus in order to avoid curatorial emphasis being placed on the pigmentation of skin, which can often reinforce such cliches.

At its core, The Medium is the Message is an exhibition concerned with pigment over pigmentation. It is primarily about the power artistic pigment holds when trying to express an identity free of cliche. The exhibition takes this focus in order to avoid curatorial emphasis being placed on the pigmentation of skin, which can often reinforce such cliches.

The Medium is the Message brings together artists who collectively navigate a world which stigmatises blackness while simultaneously celebrating its cultural products. However, unlike many recent shows featuring black artists, this is not an exhibition with a strong focus on narrative, these works do not outline societal issues by virtue of form alone. Instead, this exhibition is elemental, it seeks to return to the raw constituents of painting, to find what can be said about black identity today, through medium alone.

The exhibition rejects the lazy depictions of blackness as majesty or misery (with very little gradation between the two). The work unveils many facets of black existence: including play, solitude and contemplation; it is a collection of work that spans the entire canopy of human emotion without kowtowing to exoticism.

In letting the medium take centre stage, these artists are deploying painting as a meditative form of self expression - highlighting the process’s calming nature, and its ability to act as a contemplative release. 

Curated by Azu Nwagbogu. 

Artists include: 

Ngozi Schommers
Manyaku Mash
Ojingiri Oluwaseun Peter
Dawn Okoro
Emma Odumade
Katlego Tlabela
Sthenjwa Luthuli
John Madu
Talia Ramkilawan
Edozie Anedu
Collins Obijiaku
Ludovic Nkoth
Sungi Mlengeya
Eniwaye Oluwaseyi
Wonder Buhle Mbambo
Zandile Tshabalala
Tiffany Alfonseca
Barry Yusufu