KAMBUI OLUJIMI

When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Painting

On view: November 18, 2022- August 31, 2023

Zeitz MOCAA, South Africa 

When We See Us is a timely exhibition that celebrates global Black subjectivities and Black consciousness from pan-African and pan-diasporic perspectives.

With a focus on painting, specifically works produced from the 1920s to the present, When We See Us celebrates how artists from Africa and its diaspora have imagined, positioned, memorialised and asserted African and African-descent experiences. The title of the exhibition is inspired by Ava Dubernay’s When They See Us, a 2019 US drama mini-series. It depicts various forms of violence against Black bodies as still witnessed globally today. Flipping “they” to “we” allows for a dialectical shift that centres the conversation in a differential perspective of self-writing as theorised by Achille Mbembe. 

When We See Us is the largest exhibition of this scope to be held on the African continent. It will feature more than 200 works of art from the past 100 years. The exhibition is about affirming agency and self-determination across the Black world. As such, central to the exhibition is the resilience, essence and political charge of Black joy and the Black quotidian. 

The exhibition brings to the fore how multiple generations of Black artists have revelled and critically engaged in projecting various notions of Blackness and Africanicity that are self-reflective and that challenge the gaze imposed on Black cultures.

Chasing Icebergs: Art and A Disappearing Landscape

On view: November 19, 2022 – March 26, 2023 

The Olana Partnership

Hudson, NY 

Few artists of any time have been as deeply engaged with the iconography of the arctic as Frederic Edwin Church. The subject of icebergs has taken on a new meaning in the work of contemporary artists who have approached the same subject matter with consciousness of the new vulnerability that Arctic ice makes visible, legible, and incontrovertible in the time of climate crisis. I will be presenting two sculptures from InDecisive Moments that model icebergs as literal time-telling devices in the form of hourglasses, showing the onward march of melt and calving. 

Sharjah Biennial 15: Thinking Historically in the Present 

On view:  February 7 - June 11, 2023

The Flying Saucer, Sharjah Art Foundation

Sharjah, UAE

Conceived by the late Okwui Enwezor and curated by Hoor Al Qasimi, Director of Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah Biennial 15 (SB15), titled Thinking Historically in the Present, reflects on Enwezor’s visionary work, which transformed contemporary art and established an ambitious intellectual project that has influenced the evolution of institutions and biennials around the world, including the Sharjah Biennial. Bringing together more than 150 artists from over 70 countries, SB15 will take place in 16 venues across the emirate of Sharjah.