A bit of Africa has taken up residence at the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University.
On display through June 9 in the ICA’s first floor gallery is “Traces of Ecstasy,” an adaptation of an exhibition from the Lagos Biennial, which took place in early February. Through video, sculpture, textiles, sound and other mediums, the exhibition investigates Nigeria’s postcolonial legacy and the theme of refuge.
Originally, “Traces of Ecstasy” was displayed in central Lagos’ Tafawa Balewa Square, a site that has held everything from cricket matches to ceremonies celebrating Nigeria’s independence from Britain in 1960.
ICA curator Amber Esseiva says that the exhibition’s set up in Lagos was vastly different from the white-walled modern space of the ICA.
“The way it was configured had all the artists and all the same pieces, but it was an outdoor structure that took a different shape, so we recreated it for our space,” says Esseiva. “The cinderblock walls in fragments throughout the gallery is a notion that goes back to the architectural pavilion [in Lagos], which was a big cinderblock half-circle.”
Esseiva says the ICA’s galleries are sedate when compared to the “Times Square”-like energy of Lagos.
“It’s a very different experience culturally, but all of the works are the same,” Esseiva says. “Being contained in our space, in our architecture, has kind of formalized them a little bit and has created a different experience in the artworks. The attempt is to relay some of the cultural aspects of Nigeria in the way it produces art, in the way it functions around culture without having the business of a bustling city.”
This exhibition was overseen by New York-based guest curator KJ Abudu.
“As part of our work of identifying really interesting young artists, we also work to identify really interesting young curators, and KJ is someone who has been on my radar,” Esseiva explains. “They recently just graduated from Columbia’s master’s program in curatorial studies.”
The exhibition features artists who are from Africa and its diasporas: Nolan Oswald Dennis, Evan Ifekoya, Raymond Pinto, Temitayo Shonibare and Adeju Thompson.
“All of them are thinking about histories of Nigerian colonial legacy, post-colonial legacy, artistic tradition and contemporary artistic practices — colliding traditional with contemporary art and art practices and thinking about colonial legacies,” Esseiva says. “Almost all the artists in the show are thinking about this through a queer lens, something that’s very much suppressed in Nigerian postcolonial life. An opportunity to go full force on the Black African queer experience was really unique.”
Adeju Thompson’s textile pieces rework Yoruba clothing styles and adire, a type of dyed cloth made by Yoruba women in southwestern Nigeria.
“Adeju Thompson is a fashion designer who’s thinking through traditions of Nigerian textile production and jewelry and bronze making,” Esseiva says. “Those are traditional adire textile techniques that he worked with Nigerian artisans to create, and he made them into new, queer embodied outfits and objects.”
In the back of the gallery is Temitayo Shonibare’s “By Divine Decree!!” a three-channel video installation that weaves together different aural and visual media, including government demonstrations and independence parades at Tafawa Balewa Square; Shonibare compares these visuals to voguing, a stylized form of dance created by Black and Latino LGBTQ+ communities in Harlem.
“She’s trying to make the connection between this militarized movement of the body and this hyper-queer movement of the body and splicing film where those interchange,” Esseiva says.
The exhibition also features trace sculptures by Nolan Oswald Dennis and Evan Ifekoya’s “Three States of Water: The Flood” which includes the sounds of water and Yoruba polyrhythmic drumming.
On Friday, the ICA will host the “Traces of Ecstasy Symposium,” a seven-hour event featuring lectures, conversations, a curator-led tour of the exhibit and a performance by artist and choreographer Raymond Pinto.
Informed by Nigerian masquerade parties, Pinto will perform while wearing garments specially designed by Thompson. According to the symposium’s website, the lectures and conversations will discuss the “fraught relationship between colonial modernity and African indigeneity; the pitfalls of postcolonial statecraft; the intersections of critical African studies and queer and feminist theory; and the affinities between African metaphysical schemes and digital technologies.”
The “Traces of Ecstasy Symposium” takes place Friday, March 29 from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University, 601 W. Broad St. The exhibition will be on display until June 9. For more information, visit icavcu.org or call 804-828-2823.
