Womanscape: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in African Art

Womanscape is a group exhibition exploring the role of women, gender, and sexuality in contemporary African art.

When color definitions come from fire but not strictly from light, many sociological and creative parameters shift. Gender lines become porous and sexuality expands beyond traditional commitments within monogamous or polygamous alliances. These nuanced heterogamous experiences frame and redefine the contours of creative expressions and the consumption of expressive cultures in many African communities. By questioning western ideas of womanhood, Womanscape problematizes the boundaries between females and males in African art, through creative equations that triangulate and extrapolate traditional representations as images. Men become women and women become men, as factors of sexuality are situated within the creative form. And what really matters are not the products, but the journeys of process.

Curated by Associate Professor in Art History Dr. Moyo Okediji, Womanscape draws on works that deflect and inflect concepts of womanhood in African art. The exhibition features paintings, sculptures, installations, videos, and photographs from indigenous and contemporary hybrid cultures by artists and scholars, including Tinuomi Afilaka, Subulade Agbe, Egbeyemi Akingbade, Oni Omoleye, Omilabu Olokose, Tinuade Arayemi, Akinyi Wadende, Zanele Muholi, Folasayo Dele-Ogunrinde, Orisagbemi Arigbabuwo, Tola Wewe, and Wole Lagunju.

This exhibition is presented in partnership with the Department of Art and Art History’s Lectures on Art of the Black Diaspora and the John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies.