Tayo Adekunle

Artefact #01

SKU: 11613-4 Category:

850,00€

Clear

5+2AP

Hahnemühle paper (308 gr)

Reclamation of the Exposition (2020) explores the commodification, fetishization and sexualisation of the black female body, specifically through the human displays in ethnographic expositions in the 18thand 19th centuries. The work is influenced by ethnographic photographs which were circulated as pornography. Black (and other racial minority) bodies were photographed either naked in front of a white background, stripped of their identity, or surrounded by random tropical plants to make the photographs seem authentic. Using self-portraiture and digital collage whilst drawing from Prince Roland Napoleon Bonaparte’s photographic collection ‘Boshimans et Hottentots’, the works combine the contemporary with historic ways of being seen. Referencing her Nigerian heritage, Adekunle explores the relationship between the past and present ways the black female body is treated.

2020

Originally from Wakefield, West Yorkshire, Tayo Adekunle is a British Nigerian photographer based in London. Working a lot with self-portraiture, she uses her work to explore issues surrounding race, gender and sexuality as well as racial and colonial history. Her work is centred around the reworking of historical tropes relating to the black female body, taking from contexts that include art historical paintings and sculptures as well as 19th century colonial photography. By placing historical imagery in a contemporary context, the relationship between the treatment of the black female body in the past and its treatment in the present day is explored.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2021  
Workplace Foundation

GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2022  
RSA New Contemporaries 2022 (upcoming).

2021  
SSA 123rd Annual Exhibition.
Touch: The Politics of Physicality - ACall Festival.
Mindshift Exhibition, The University of Edinburgh.

2020  
Futureproof 2020, Street Level Photoworks.
COUP DE FOUDRE, Insurgency Gallery and Five Years.
THIS IS TOMORROW CALLING (Wishing you were here), Alt_D at Zembla Gallery.
A Quest That’s Just Begun, Wooosh Gallery with Generator Projects.
Alt_D Alternative Graduate Showcase (Online).
Buffering… Final Year Exhibition, Edinburgh College of Art.

2019  
She__. Exhibition, Whitespace Gallery.
Butter On Bacon, Hospitalfield, Arbroath.

2018  
2018 - Material Dialogues, Fire Station, Edinburgh.

2017  
ECA End of Year Exhibition, DOK Space

ECA Micro-Residency, Hospitalfield, Arbroath, Dundee

Edinburgh College of Art Degree Show Purchase Prize-2020.
Clason-Harvie Bursary-2020.
Astaire Art Prize 2020-Shortlisted Artist.