ISCP TalkJune 6, 2017, 6:30–8pm
Panel Discussion on CCA Lagos with ruby onyinyechi amanze, Jude Anogwih, Simone Leigh and Pinar Yolacan
CCA Lagos at ISCP is an institutional residency that presents selections from CCA Lagos’s archives as well as the exhibition Orí méta odún méta ibìkan. This panel discussion—moderated by long-term CCA Lagos collaborator Jude Anogwih—will focus on past projects at CCA Lagos by three New York City-based artists: ruby onyinyechi amanze, Simone Leigh and Pinar Yolacan.
In Nigeria, CCA Lagos provides a platform for the development, presentation, and discussion of contemporary visual art and culture. It seeks to create new audiences and to prioritize media such as photography, film and video, performance and installation art which were traditionally underrepresented in Nigeria. The institution supports and presents the intellectual and critical work of art and culture practitioners through exhibitions and public programs. In addition, it encourages and promotes the professionalization of art production and curatorship in Nigeria and West Africa collaborating with artists, curators, writers, theorists and national and international organizations.
Participant Biographies:
ruby onyinyechi amanze is a visual artist born in Nigeria whose practice is primarily centered around drawing and works on paper. In 2012–2013, amanze was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. In 2016, she was selected as a finalist for the prestigious Prix Canson drawing prize. She has exhibited her work internationally in Lagos, London, Johannesburg and Paris, and nationally at the California African American Museum, the Drawing Center and the Studio Museum in Harlem.
Jude Anogwih is a visual artist and curator living and working in Lagos, Nigeria who has coordinated, organized and curated projects at CCA Lagos since 2008. Recent curatorial projects include Videonale in Lagos, 2016; Biennale Jogja XIII, Indonesia, 2015; ARENA (where would I have got if I had been intelligent!), Centre for Contemporary Art, Torun, Poland, 2014; Whose Centenary? Project, Benin, Nigeria, 2014; Kelani Abass: Àsìkò: Evoking Personal Narratives and Collective History, co-curated with Bisi Silva, CCA Lagos, 2013; and Sights and Sounds: Global Film and Video, Jewish Museum, New York, 2013–2016. Anogwih was a Goethe-Institut Fellow at dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel.
Simone Leigh’s practice incorporates sculpture, video, and installation, all informed by her ongoing exploration of black female subjectivity and ethnography. In 2016, Leigh received a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, the Herb Alpert Award for Visual Art, and A Blade of Grass Fellowship for Socially Engaged Art. Recent projects and exhibitions include Psychic Friends Network, Tate Exchange, Tate Modern, London, 2016; The Waiting Room, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, 2016; The Free People’s Medical Clinic, commissioned by Creative Time, 2014; inHarlem, public installation presented by The Studio Museum in Harlem at Marcus Garvey Park, New York, 2016; and a solo exhibition at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, 2016.
Pinar Yolacan is a multidisciplinary artist based in New York and Sao Paulo. Born in Turkey, Yolacan has had solo shows at Yapi Kredi Foundation, Istanbul; Finnish Museum of Photography, Helsinki; and CCA Lagos. Since 1997, reviews about her work have appeared regularly in The New York Times, Art in America, ArtReview, Bidoun, The Sunday Times, British Journal of Photography, Vogue and i-D magazines. Her work is in the permanent collections of The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; KIASMA Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki; International Center of Photography, New York; and Saatchi Gallery, London.
This program is supported, in part, by Dennis Elliott Founder’s Fund, Greenwich Collection Ltd., New York City Council District 34, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council, New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.