The exhibition This Is the Place and Time highlights a selection of mixed-media works created by Adjani Okpu-Egbe in the last ten years. Amidst a cohesion of a wide range of themes and diverse artistic interventions, these works encompass the multilayered trajectory of this artist’s practice.
The exhibition focuses on how the artist explores notions of space and time as a means to construct a platform for exposing the historical injustices and the global imbalances of power affecting black communities and envisaging change through activism.
Adjani Okpu-Egbe is a multidisciplinary artist of the African diaspora born in 1979 in Kumba in Southern Cameroons, also known as Ambazonia, who lives and works in London. Through the selection of artworks, the exhibition explores various themes related to African history, archaeology, Pan-Africanism, the African diaspora, political activism and feminism blended with autobiographical references. The coexistence of such complex subjects illustrates how Okpu-Egbe’s artistic practice aims to build an inclusive space for addressing global civil rights related to a heterogenous black experience.
Okpu-Egbe is loosely associated with the Afrosurrealist and Afrofuturist art movements, both developed in the 1990s. The artist shares a sensibility with these movements while simultaneously operating beyond any prefixed set of aesthetics and approaches. For instance, his adoption of surrealistic imagery is a strategic engagement tool to question reality and mould spaces of encounters. Firstly, metaphoric symbols can expand the audience’s mental reach through the agency of interpreting the enigmatic imagery. Secondly, reading signs is an open-ended process, which can generate discussion among the public, creating a social space for debate. A debate in which the artist relishes participating through his titles which provide multiple ways of accessing his work.
For Okpu-Egbe, the artist’s social responsibility is to shed light on sociopolitical and economic problems affecting the black communities, underscoring how activism, intervention and resistance characterise the artist’s practice. The political nature of Okpu-Egbe’s work demands questioning any preconceived rationalities to undermine the logic at the foundations of the neocolonial practices, which will endure any space and time limitations if they are not addressed. His form of intellectual defiance aims to deconstruct and expose the framework holding together the persistent authoritarian colonial system rooted in secular racism and envisage action as a path to achieve social fairness.
The Loft, 51 Surrey Row Unit 2 La Gare London SE1 0BZ until June 30th.
