Ocula Conversation Cinga Samson: ‘a different conversation on representation’ By Jareh Das, New York Cinga Samson 's paintings lay bare the complex relationship between contemporary life, African traditions, globalisation, and representation. His strikingly sombre portraits contain similarities to those of contemporary painters such as Toyin Ojih Odutola, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye , Kehinde Wiley , Florine Démosthène, and Tunji...
Ocula Report Dhaka Art Summit 2020: Seismic Movements By Radha Mahendru, Dhaka Seismic Movements , the fifth Dhaka Art Summit, plotted movements, solidarities, and exchanges across the Global South with over 500 artists, scholars, curators, and thinkers.
Ocula Insight Guo Hongwei on Seeing Patterns That Don’t Exist By Sherry Paik, New York Guo Hongwei's recent watercolour paintings, showing at Chambers Fine Art in New York from 3 March, trigger pareidolia—the phenomenon of seeing random objects or patterns where they do not exist.
Related Press The Art Newspaper's pick of the 2019 Venice Biennale 30 April 2019, The Art Newspaper There are hundreds of exhibitions in Venice during the Biennale. Alongside the main exhibition in the Giardini and Arsenale, there are 90 national presentations, many in nearby pavilions in the Giardini and in spaces around the Arsenale, but also dotted throughout Venice. Then there are the official collateral exhibitions in museums and galleries,...
Related Press John Akomfrah Commemorates the Colonial Soldiers Who Fought for a Cause that Was Not Theirs 22 January 2019, Frieze In the opening image of John Akomfrah's Mimesis: African Soldier (2018), we are confronted by a row of black and brown faces who smile nervously and knowingly into the camera. They represent the faces we seldom see in war documentaries or history books; their smiles evoke a quiet sense of unease and foreboding. Once the colonial subjects of...
Related Press Strange Days review – fishy kisses, naked prancing and ribald revenge 3 October 2018, The Guardian Strange Days: Memories of the Future is overwhelming: complex, at times annoying and confusing, repetitive, uplifting and baffling. Like life, really. Films and videos by 21 artists are spread over three floors of the Store X on London's Strand.
Related Press John Akomfrah Discusses Channeling J.M.W. Turner and Disasters at Sea 11 June 2018, Hyperallergic When he was four years old, artist and filmmaker John Akomfrah came to London from Ghana with his parents. Because of their anti-colonial activism — they worked with Kwame Nkrumah, who became the country’s first prime minister and president after Ghana’s liberation from Britain —their lives were in danger. The family lived near the Tate, and...
Related Press Frieze Art Fair, London 6 October 2017, Art Agenda Leave or Remain, Trump or Clinton, terror, peace, boredom, or indifference: no matter where the world is at culturally, politically, socially, or existentially, there will always be another Frieze fair in early October. If last year's edition occurred within the shadow of a particularly pronounced period of political uncertainty, by now the cards...
