Please join us for an evening of gallery exhibitions
Details of the exhibitions:
The Healing Pavilion is a new art commission by British-Kenyan visual artist Grace Ndiritu. The Twin Tapestries’ are based on archival images from Wellcome Collection and the Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin, titled ‘Repair (1915)’ and ‘Restitution (1973)’, respectively. They ask what has changed since these photographs were taken and reveal violent pasts and hidden power dynamics at the foundation of Western museology, while reflecting attitudes and practices towards African objects in many European museum collections.
Rites of Passage explores the idea of “liminal space,” a coinage of anthropologist Arnold van Gennep (1873–1957). In his 1909 book, after which the exhibition is titled, Van Gennep was among the first to observe that the transitional events of birth, puberty, marriage, and death are marked by ceremonies with a ritual function that transcends cultural boundaries. Highlighting this phenomenon in physical, mental, and spiritual arenas, Oshin’s exhibition challenges linear narratives through works in a variety of mediums, which fill Gagosian’s expansive Britannia Street gallery.
City of Burrows, a solo exhibition of new and existing work by London-based artist Mohammed Z. Rahman. Interweaving personal, social and folk histories of migration, labour, queerness, family and class, Rahman’s paintings disturb conventions of domestic space and custom in favour of dream logic and moments of magical realism, excavating stories of overlooked figures and everyday resistance. His works employ the visual language of surrealism and social realism – art movements which, Rahman points out, flourish during times of social unrest: “the former, in that it allows one to dream beyond current conditions and process the unconscious, and the latter, to give voice to the everyday lived experience of the working and non-ruling classes, acting against hegemony.”
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Schedule of the day:
4.30 – 5.30 The Healing Pavilion a commission by Grace Ndiritu, Wellcome Collection.
5.30 – 6.30 Rites of Passages at Gagosian Gallery, Britannia Street, WC1X
6.30 – 7.30 Mohammed Z. Rahman Philippa Reid, 10 – 16 Grape Street, WC2H
Please RSVP by 24th March 2023 to info@contemporaryartsociety.org