Body Talk: Feminism, Sexuality and the Body in the Work of Six African Women Artists

Body Talk addresses issues of feminism, sexuality and the body, as they play themselves out in the work of a generation of women artists from Africa active since the early 1990s.

Bringing together artists from different parts of the continent, this group exhibition strives to define and articulate notions of feminism and sexuality in the work of women artists whose body (their own or that of others) serves as a tool, a representation or a field of investigation. In their work, the body manifests itself, whether sequentially or simultaneously, as a model, support, subject or object. Ever since, the existence of a specifically African – and black – feminism, together with the spread of artistic practice and the economics of art to international networks, have given shape, since the 1990s, to the development of a black feminist art. Stemming from the continent and the Diaspora, this black feminist art depicts bodies that continue a tradition of activism and freedom of speech, which it expresses with references to historical and political figures, and through the recreation of modern personas, of past and present bodies, all of which the artists appropriate. The exhibition presents a survey of the issues raised by such exposed bodies.

Including:
Zoulikha Bouabdellah (Algeria)
Marcia Kure (Nigeria)
Miriam Syowia Kyambi (Kenya)
Valérie Oka (Ivory Cost)
Tracey Rose (South Africa)
Billie Zangewa (Malawi/ South Africa)

Curator: Koyo Kouoh, assisted by Eva Barois De Caevel (RAW Material Company, Senegal)
In coproduction with Wiels, Bryssel and FRAC Lorraine, Metz