ISCP TalkNovember 8, 2022, 6–7pm
Maliyamungu Gift Muhande and Evelyn Owen discuss 'Kobikisa'
In conjunction with the exhibition Maliyamungu Gift Muhande: Kobikisa, on view at ISCP through December 2, 2022, Evelyn Owen, Associate Curator at The Africa Center, and Maliyamungu Gift Muhande, 2021-22 recipient of The New York Community Trust’s Edward and Sally Van Lier Fund residency at ISCP, will have a conversation about the main themes of Muhande’s solo show.
The two will discuss Muhande’s use of embodied healing practices in her art. The artist addresses personal traumatic experiences and invites audiences to think about their own relationships to memory. The exhibition is a provocation to remember what has been forgotten, in the recent past and by calling upon knowledge held–and at times withheld–by elders and ancestors. In Kobikisa, the artist processes information in a physical way by receiving acupuncture and a massage, depicted in a video installation in the center of the gallery. Also on view are body prints by Muhande, meticulously filled in with delicate line drawings.
Maliyamungu Gift Muhande is a Congolese artist, filmmaker, and educator based in New York. Her work explores the global history of the African diaspora at the intersection of anti-colonialism and artistic creativity. Muhande’s documentary film about NYC street photographer Louis Mendes, Nine Days a Week, was screened at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival and 2020 Doc NYC festival, and selected by the 2020 National Board of Review. She is currently a Sundance Producer Summit Fellow and artist-in-residence at Jacob Burns Film Center. Additionally, Muhande is a part-time faculty member at Parsons School of Design. Muhande was a New York Community Trust Van Lier artist-in-residence at ISCP and Sundance Ignite x Adobe Fellow in 2022.
Evelyn Owen is a curator based in New York City. A cultural geographer by training, her research explores contested geographical imaginations, especially in relation to art and artists from and about Africa and its diaspora. For The Africa Center, she co-curated the installations Gymnasium (2019) by Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi, Harlem Sunrise (2018) by Victor Ekpuk, and Lagos State of Mind II (2014) by Emeka Ogboh. Elsewhere, she curated Tracing Obsolescence at apexart, New York (2018) and, with Yaëlle Biro, co-curated the exhibition The Aftermath of Conflict: Jo Ractliffe’s Photographs of Angola and South Africa at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2015). Evelyn received her BA in Geography from the University of Cambridge, and an MA in Cities and Cultures and a PhD on the Geographies of Contemporary African Art from Queen Mary, University of London.
This program is supported by Ada Tolla, LOT-EK; The New York Community Trust’s Edward and Sally Van Lier Fund; Hartfield Foundation; Living Ritual; Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation; New York City Council District 33; New York City Council District 34; New York State Council on the Arts and the New York State Legislature; Robert Baker & Marcia Hecht; San Francisco Foundation; and William Talbott Hillman Foundation.
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running from October 3-18
