May 12–June 17, 2023 | New York, USA
Fridman Gallery New York presents, Cake, Wura-Natasha Ogunji’s first solo exhibition in New York.
Ogunji works in drawing, painting, performance, and video. The exhibition includes new drawings and a site-specific thread installation, accompanied by a selection of the artist's early video works. In many of her drawings Ogunji explores water as architecture – lagoons rendered in ink, stitched lines of a river, or the empty space of the paper itself (an imagined expanse of sea). The work also often develops around language. As the artist creates, titles emerge and become the structure determining the form of the pieces.
Ogunji's site-specific installation, The one where we're all here, transforms the gallery space into an immersive environment that invites the viewers to participate. The installation consists of several layers of tracing paper hanging from the ceiling, creating a translucent curtain that separates the space into different zones. The paper is marked with thread, ink, and graphite, creating patterns and shapes that echo the drawings. The viewers are encouraged to walk through the paper curtain, touch it, tear it, or add their own marks to it. The installation reflects Ogunji's interest in the relationship between the body and space, as well as the idea of collective memory and creation.
Stitching the gallery space floor-to-ceiling, the thread installation turns the space itself into a drawing that viewers can enter, a container for collective experience.
Ogunji's exhibition Cake is on view at Fridman Gallery from May 12 to June 17, 2023. It is part of her ongoing residency at Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, where she has been researching textiles, couture, lace and embroidery. Ogunji is a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2012 and has exhibited her work at various venues around the world, including the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Palais de Tokyo, and the Brooklyn Museum. Her work explores themes such as physicality and movement, queer life and love in Nigeria, and the nature of memory and history.
Source: Fridman Gallery
