RESHAPE 22
Future Art Histories
Contemporary female artists from Africa, reshaping and redefining the art world
Reshape is an annual, online survey exhibition that seeks to augment the visibility of contemporary women-identifying artists in Africa. The exhibition envisions a more comprehensive and inclusive art canon for future generations.
Presented online by Latitudes Online and ANNA Pure Organic, it aims to highlight powerful women-identifying voices on the continent and empower a collective whose narrative has been underplayed and neglected throughout history, all while still taking intersectional theory into consideration.
THEMATIC CURATION
Reshape probes what unites the artists by evaluating similarities in their practices and identifying five themes that are prevalent in their work at this current moment. Our 2022 themes include:
Materiality covers a broad range of artists, where the materials of their artwork strongly influence and inform their meaning. This theme also draws near to and focuses on the process in which the works are made, and how the softness of materials, processes and creative expression filter into the emotive response we feel as the viewer.
Portraiture offers a space of self-defined identity and representation, whether that be self-portraiture or stories of womanhood told by women.
The Female Gaze offers a reclamation of power (seen through composition, subject matter and direct eye contact) by women. This theme also touches on spaces where women are still at the mercy of traditional power structures and bodily violences too.
Nature and Sustainability centres around works that pertain to the environment, environmental changes, to the cyclical nature of birth and decay as well as works that are organic in their subject matter or materiality.
The Body as a Vessel references works associated with the female form and is a soft play of the relation between nature and the body. The body as a vessel also relates strongly to family as sexuality, from the making and birthing of children, and the strong intergenerational connection between mother and daughter.
For more information about artist participation or preview access to the exhibition catalogue, please contact info@latitudes.online
The show is presented online by Latitudes Online and ANNA Pure Organic.
Further Reading In Articles
African Artist Directory