2020-2022
Concept/Curation - afila.si
Black Experience isn’t a Spectacle
Montréal - Miami - New York
Black Experience isn’t a Spectacle explores the legacy of the voyeuristic gaze in visual representations of the Black body. It intends to exist as a restorative gesture against the erasure of Afrocentric perspectives in [art] history.
The concept’s foundational exhibition took place in Montréal , September 2020 at Anteism Books Gallery; facilatated by Boiling Point Collective.
Combining the spatial elements of a visual art gallery and a reading room, Black Experience isn’t a Spectacle offers a landscape of ‘counter-visualities’. Beyond iconographic representation, our audience engages with Afrocentricity through the productions of thought with a curated library. Each collection of this library interacts with image-sequencing through print and audio-visual artworks, as well as, through physical embodiment with Bantu architectural sculptures.
These add to the universal library of Black cultural productions with a subaltern experience and re-assertion of the ‘right to look’. The artworks allow for a reformulation to transform a detrimental quality of blackness – the spectacle – into a emancipatory virtue.
Full Curatorial Statement
View the Exhibition’s Printed Catalogue
The concept’s foundational exhibition took place in Montréal , September 2020 at Anteism Books Gallery; facilatated by Boiling Point Collective.
Combining the spatial elements of a visual art gallery and a reading room, Black Experience isn’t a Spectacle offers a landscape of ‘counter-visualities’. Beyond iconographic representation, our audience engages with Afrocentricity through the productions of thought with a curated library. Each collection of this library interacts with image-sequencing through print and audio-visual artworks, as well as, through physical embodiment with Bantu architectural sculptures.
These add to the universal library of Black cultural productions with a subaltern experience and re-assertion of the ‘right to look’. The artworks allow for a reformulation to transform a detrimental quality of blackness – the spectacle – into a emancipatory virtue.
Full Curatorial Statement
View the Exhibition’s Printed Catalogue
Curation by: Afi Venessa Appiah
Artworks by: Jesse Katabarwa
Sculptural works by: ibiyanε
Élodie Dérond & Tania Doumbe Fines
Cinematography by: Christian Boakye-Agyeman
Sound Design by: Ouri & Tati au Miel
Research Support by: Sona Sadio and Daouda Ka
Exhibition Documentation by : Boiling Point Collective
Artworks by: Jesse Katabarwa
Sculptural works by: ibiyanε
Élodie Dérond & Tania Doumbe Fines
Cinematography by: Christian Boakye-Agyeman
Sound Design by: Ouri & Tati au Miel
Research Support by: Sona Sadio and Daouda Ka
Exhibition Documentation by : Boiling Point Collective
Blissfully, we surrender to the
whirling blackness of consciousness
Blissfully, we surrender to the whirling Blackness of our bodies and spirit
within the darkness of the earth, is where blissful life comes from
2022
Exhibition Space - Printed Matter Art Book Fair
New York
Venessa and Maiko Rodrig curated and presented a scaled version of the premiere exhibition.
2021
Selected Special Web Project by Printed Matter Organisation
New Arts Dealers Association (NADA) Miami - Art Basel
afila.si’s founders present the Black Experience isn’t a Spectacle concept and its digital platform at a panel discussion organized by Printed Matter.
In light of Printed Matter’s Art Book Fair at NADA during Miami’s Art Basel 2021; afila.si created an open digital platform as a special project.
Users experienced the premiere exhibition while directly engaging with its theoretical core. Experimenting with A.I. generated technology, the platform aims to build community where users can socially annotate and comment on the exhibition’s curatorial reflections.
During the fair, the project won the MobileCoin Art Prize for its emphasis on privacy in pursuit of self-liberation.
2021
Selected Experimental Film - 7th Annual Afrikana Independent Film Festival
Black Cinematic Continuum curated by Afrovisualism
Richmond, Virginia
The exhibition’s audiovisual Odd.er was selected as part of the 7th Annual Afrikana Independent Film Festival.
Justin Smith of the Afrovisualism project selected each of the artists and filmmakers aligning with the Afrovisualist practice of Black Aesthetic Continual Theory considering ideas along the Black Cinematic continuity on time, rhythm, sonic and haptic.