Curator Loren Hansi Gordon intricately weaves together the work of female artists from Africa and its diasporas in an exhibition which features a wide array of media - painting, photography, video, sound, installation, textiles, and drawing. The Nottingham-based contemporary art gallery where “Laced” is set is a centre purposefully led by Black artists, as well as others of colour. It’s, therefore, the perfect place for viewers to reflect upon the shared human experiences of freedom, labour and love presented by South Africans Simnikiwe Buhlungu and Lerato Shadi, Nigerian Rahima Gambo, Nigerian-American Wura-Natasha Ogunji, German Ghanaian Zohra Opoku, Franco-Guyano-Danish Tabita Rezaire, and British Afro-Caribbean Michaela Yearwood-Dan.
What began as a poem led to a web of intersections offering viewers a glimpse of the female diasporic experience. “Laced” is a vivid visual experience that creates contemplative moments courtesy of skillful artists invested in their respective processes and disciplines. AMAKA sat down with the exhibition's curator to learn more.
Tell us about the curatorial journey behind the creation of “Laced: In Search of What Connects Us”?
The cinematic journey of the exhibition started from conversations I was having with Michaela and Simnikiwe during their residency. One of the themes that runs through the show is the experience of women in public space, and that really came out of a conversation that the three of us had had about their very different experiences of being in London versus Johannesburg, as women travelling alone, and travelling through public space. That led to this thinking about freedom and what it means to be free. And then [this led] onto connecting with Nina Simone and her brilliant observation about freedom being the absence of fear…
In terms of my curatorial approach, I think I'm definitely a writer at heart. And I think writing is the place where I explore ideas. It's my thinking space. I probably took quite an unusual approach to curating this exhibition, and it generated itself through a series of connections and references, and snippets of information that formed into the kind of poetic text that is like word plays, associations, and bringing together these themes around love, labour, and liberty, but also about self-exploration and self-knowledge. And so that poem then became this temporary stitchwork that holds together a set of ideas, [which] then became the guiding principle for how to select the artists and the works in this show, which I know sounds incredibly complicated.
What does "Laced" mean?
This idea of "Laced" has [a lot] of wordplay. Laced is a very generous term because it means so many different things. Laced is a network. Laced is a netting. Laced is a network of artists. Laced is a drink made potent. Laced, lissu, noose... There's definitely a feminist strand to this, although it's rumbling deep under the surface. Laced is how we wear our hair. Laced is woven into the history of this place, which is Nottingham; so the city of Nottingham was a big player in the lace industries of the Industrial Revolution, and the lace industry was also a big employer of women and girls in that era.
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What is the history of black female artists in England?
I think only one of the artists in the exhibition is English or British, and the other artists are or have connections with the African continent but also the diaspora, whether that's Germany or France, or Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, the Caribbean, so it's a very broad idea of Africa and the diaspora. These are also women artists who are very well established and well respected in their careers internationally, although they're not necessarily so well known here in the UK. What I'm excited about is this being an opportunity to bring really high calibre skills for women artists to UK audiences. Hopefully, people will travel from further away to really experience this work.
On a more general level, I think we're in an exciting moment, in that we're seeing people such as Lubaina Himid and Sonia Dawn Boyce being really recognised by the institutions. I think a lot of the work that they did in the 80s to fight for visibility and for their voices is now coming to fruition. They're being brought under the wing of mainstream institutions and recognised for the value and importance of their work. We're in a very good moment, but there's still work to be done for the different generations coming up facing different kinds of challenges.
What do you hold as the female diasporic experience?
I can't speak for other people's experiences as my experience will be very different to the experience of the women in this exhibition and probably like the range of different people that will come to see the show. And maybe that's the root of what I hold close, which is the fact that it's so important to be able to tell a range of different stories from a range of different perspectives. I don't think there is a singular experience, and that was important for me in this exhibition. The reason that it's "in search of what connects us" is because, at heart, what I'm really interested in is what connects us on the level of being human. We all have an understanding of what love means, we've all been engaged in some kind of work or labour, and we all have a kind of understanding of what freedom is like. The aforementioned is something that connects us as human beings. What I wanted to start from was a place of coming together and thinking about shared experiences. From the perspective of these seven women artists or the female gaze, I'm trying to see "What connects us rather than what sets us apart?" I am asking us to value the knowledge that each of us coming to the exhibition has. You don't have to come with academic knowledge or pre-understanding, but you can come and just experience the work. The knowledge that's produced by that is valuable. I am trying to be inclusive by unifying all kinds of shared human experiences.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity
The exhibition will be on view at Nottingham’s New Art Exchange from 30 October 2021 through 9 January 2022.