Laced: In Search Of What Connects Us

About

Laced is an exhibition of existing and newly commissioned painting, photography, video, sound, textiles and drawing by seven female artists from Africa and its diasporas.

The artists, Simnikiwe Buhlungu, Rahima Gambo, Wura-Natasha Ogunji, Zohra Opoku, Tabita Rezaire, Lerato Shadi and Michaela Yearwood-Dan explore themes of love, labour and liberty.

The selected artworks create a rich web of interconnections, offering a glimpse into a range of female diasporic experience.  Laced is experienced as a visual landscape of vivid colours, deep-ocean waters and lush tropical vegetation that is at moments contemplative, poignant and empowering.

Several of the artists use textiles to tell their stories, threading their practice directly to the city of Nottingham, a historic centre for textile production and lacemaking.

The experiences of women in the public sphere is a recurring theme in Laced, particularly the everyday action of walking. The exhibition opens to the public at a time when we are again reminded of the repeated threats to women's freedom to move around freely.

A powerful and wide-ranging exhibition, Laced is a meditation on the threads that connect us to ourselves and each other.