Under Our Skin: Some Thoughts on I see; I breathe; I am!
Surrey Art Gallery, British Columbia, 17 September–11 December 2022
To be both African and Canadian, Black and living in the West — to be a member of our most bombastic diaspora — is to juggle several realities simultaneously: the reality superimposed onto our bodies, the reality of the white world in which we find ourselves, the one that branded us Black, and tries, albeit unsuccessfully, to homogenize us; and the reality, the culture, and the love we find in the places we call home. Whether brought to this land by slave traders, migration, war, or another offspring of the colonial tragedy, Black peoples have had to forge new identities, while also contending with the disjointed but intertwined histories that bind them together. For those of us who consider themselves African and have, after centuries of plunder, mass-murder, and subjugation under the harrowing consequences of unchecked aryanism, recently sought refuge or immigrated to Canada, our diasporic perspective is one that calls into question monolithic conceptions of Blackness and Black homogeneity. In the same vein, the exhibition I see; I breathe; I am!, which was curated by The Black Arts Centre (Surry, BC) and features artists Nancy Ainomugisha and Olúwáṣọlá Kẹ́hìndé Olówó-Aké (Sola), centers African identity in Canada and Black female and femme experiences, while also challenging the assumptions surrounding Blackness itself.
This small but provoking exhibition — which is in conversation with Concealed Cultures: Visualizing the Black Vernacular, another exhibition curated by The Black Arts Centre on view at Surrey Art Gallery — uses film, photography, and storytelling to confront societal paradigms of Blackness that leave no space for African identity in Canada. At the same time, it seeks to broaden the scope of conversations concerning Black femininity. At the entrance to the exhibition, visitors encounter I am not Black… but I am (2022), a poem by Olúwáṣọlá Kẹ́hìndé Olówó-Aké that explores her paradoxical relationship with Blackness. The piece begins with the lines, “Who is Black? Me?/Oh really? I’ve never seen it documented in my story/Or my family history or in the names/my grandparents gave me.” A few lines later, the poem reads, “They said I’m Black/I did not hear it from the people that raised me/Nor the elders that told me stories.” These few lines beautifully capture the exhibition’s raison d’être and lay the foundation for it as a whole, which conceives of Blackness as an identity forced onto the Black body through its hypervisibility. In essence married to the white gaze, this identity strips away Black African histories, ethnicities, languages, cultures, and, in many ways, the personhood of African peoples. In this way, Blackness is less an embodied identity than a marker of involuntary homogenization.
Building on its transgressive, but necessary framework, I see; I breathe; I am! continues its exploration of Black femininity in an African context with Nancy Ainomugisha’s An Ode to my Mother (2021–2022). Featuring two photographs on aluminum that have been digitally manipulated, this work shows a woman wearing her mother’s traditional clothing. The work is both compelling and a reflection of African womanhood and the ways it is passed down from generation to generation. Underlaying this engaging presentation of inherited culture is a story about the preservation of tradition after migration. Even in a place like Vancouver, where Black Africans are few and far between, remembering ourselves and the people we come from is not only an act of love, it is a revolt against a world that erases who we are under our skin.
Similarly, Olúwáṣọlá Kẹ́hìndé Olówó-Aké’s short video Ahọn Dudu (2021), which is accompanied by a poem with the same title, features the artist wearing garments she made. An enthralling fusion of dance, Yoruba storytelling, song, and African ingenuity, the work appears to have been shot in downtown Vancouver, adding a layer of disconnectedness. On one hand, Ahọn Dudu is a celebration of the artist’s roots and creative expression; on the other, it is a commentary on displacement and life without a community of people who see you for your humanity and not simply as a token.
All things considered, I see; I breathe; I am! is a thought-provoking triumph that will leave those lucky enough to see it with a sense of the breadth of African culture and how it cannot be summarized with the word “Black” alone. While the exhibition is not a refutation of Blackness and the communities Black peoples have forged out of their oppression, it is a cry for its diversification. For Africans that walk into the red room that holds the work of these budding artists, this exhibition will be both reminiscent of the kind of conversations unique to our section of the diaspora, and a reminder that we are as marked by the cultures that raise us as we are by the melanin that colours our skin. For society at large, this exhibition will come as a challenge to the racial ideology that permeates Canada, its norms, and its history. Above all, I see; I breathe; I am! is an assertion of Black, African femme identity, and a symbol of our collective need to be recognized as people.
— N. Lema Lubendo, Vancouver, 2023
Noah Lema Lubendo is a Vancouver-based, emerging Canadian writer, with Congolese roots. He is a graduate of Mount Allison University, where he majored in Political Science and minored in Sociology. He appears in the anthology, Cotyledon (Vancouver Poetry House, 2021), Maple Tree Literary Supplement’s 25th issue (2022), and has written art reviews for No Ducks and SAD Mag.
