"SO, AN IGBO AND INUK WOMAN WALK INTO A GALLERY..."
︎︎︎

In my essay exploring the possibilities of curating a counter-archive that centers Black and Indigenous women in the re-telling of Canada’s history as a settler-colonial nation, I end with an acknowledgment that “to curate as a Black Canadian working with Black and Indigenous artists is different from curating as an Igbo woman alongside Inuk and Plains Cree artists.” As my contribution to Disembodied Territories, I would like to take this line of thinking further and write a speculative text (most likely a conversation with one of the artists from the exhibition, an Inuk woman who has become a dear friend) that re-imagines and invents what the latter experience would have been like. Rather than Wynter’s triadic model of European-Negro-Indian – and later Fred Wilderson’s Red, White and Black – this piece (whatever shape it ends up taking) would explore the possibilities of a dyadic Negro-Indian, or Red-Black, or African-Native or Igbo-Inuk (as an example), in ways that de-center and de-stabilize not only our understandings of how we have come (and can come) to be together, but also of place, of migration, of relation. Aiming to step outside of the master’s house – if even for a moment, if only for a glimpse—the piece will tell the story of an encounter between an Igbo and Inuk woman that we were never given the opportunity to experience.

Kosisochukwu Nnebe is a Nigerian-Canadian visual artist and curator. An economist by training and a policy analyst by profession, her visual arts practice explores the process of racialization and aims to engage viewers on issues both personal and structural in ways that bring awareness to their own complicity. Her work has been exhibited in galleries across Ontario and Quebec, as well as in the United States. In 2020, she curated her first exhibition,They Forgot That We Were Seeds, at the Carleton University Art Gallery. The exhibition brought together 8 Black and Indigenous women artists and aimed to create a counter-archive of Canada's history as a settler-colonial nation. She is currently based in London, UK where she is pursuing an MSc in Inequalities and Social Science at the London School of Economics.

︎︎︎ previous project

next project ︎︎︎

Alfonse Chiu /// Anna Sango /// Aya Nassar /// Azza Ezzat /// Bothan Ahmed Botan /// Christiana Ajai-Thomas /// Chrystel Oloukoï /// Claudia Gastrow /// Dele Adeyemo /// Ella den Elzen /// Fozia Ismail /// Grace Adeniyi-Ogunyankin /// Huda Tayob ///

Ibiye Camp /// Iman Nagy /// Jacquelin Kataneksza /// k. eltinaé /// Khensani de Klerk /// Kosisochukwu Nnebe /// kyle malanda /// Lebogang Mokwena /// Léopold Lambert /// Marc Miller /// Maria Gabriela Carrilho Aragão /// Mário Barros /// Moad Musbahi /// Nasra Abdullahi /// Nivi Manchanda ///

"SO, AN IGBO AND INUK WOMAN WALK INTO A GALLERY..."
︎︎︎

Alfonse Chiu /// Anna Sango /// Aya Nassar /// Azza Ezzat /// Bothan Ahmed Botan /// Christiana Ajai-Thomas /// Chrystel Oloukoï /// Claudia Gastrow /// Dele Adeyemo /// Ella den Elzen /// Fozia Ismail /// Grace Adeniyi-Ogunyankin /// Huda Tayob ///

Ibiye Camp /// Iman Nagy /// Jacquelin Kataneksza /// k. eltinaé /// Khensani de Klerk /// Kosisochukwu Nnebe /// kyle malanda /// Lebogang Mokwena /// Léopold Lambert /// Marc Miller /// Maria Gabriela Carrilho Aragão /// Mário Barros /// Moad Musbahi /// Nasra Abdullahi /// Nivi Manchanda ///

"SO, AN IGBO AND INUK WOMAN WALK INTO A GALLERY..."︎︎︎

"SO, AN IGBO AND INUK WOMAN WALK INTO A GALLERY..."
︎︎︎