Curated by Sosa Omorogbe, Freedom in Multitudes is a group exhibition featuring Afeez Onakoya, Amanda Shingirai Mushate, Anne Adams, Nola Ayoola, Rachel Seidu, Roisin Jones, Sola Olulode, Ousmane Bâ, and Uthman Wahaab. The show will run from 5-14 October at 32 Connaught Street, London.
Freedom in Multitudes brings together a diverse cohort of artists from across the Black diaspora whose works seek to explore the multiplicity of “self”.
Central to the exhibition is the exploration of W.E.B. Du Bois’s theory of double consciousness: the feeling of “always looking at oneself through the eyes of others.” In conversation with Du Bois, Freedom in Multitudes investigates the feeling of always looking at oneself through one’s own eyes instead – a single consciousness wherein our self-image stems from our perception of what lies within and not as a factor of our existence as “other”.
Through the lens of our own eyes, we are able to consider ourselves on a granular level; freely traversing a dynamic spectrum of histories, emotions, experiences, and futures. The artists’ depictions eschew traditionally rigid figuration, recognising its limitations as a visual representation of the complex amalgam that constitutes a human being. Through diverse media, these artists aim to unify rather than fragment, to honour complexity rather than simplify, and to espouse the Black freedom of existing across multitudes.
Multitudes are often understood by using one’s past as a lens through which the present can be examined and the future forecast. This exploration is at the crux of Anne Adams’s practice, in which she interrogates hybridity and nuance in identity formation, embracing plurality and rejecting monolithic narratives of truth, reason, and identity. Exhibiting collage works for the first time, Adams navigates her identity as a sum of past, present, and future. Drawing inspiration from the legacy of pre-colonial Nigerian art, her work is a celebration of the profound mastery and intellectual ingenuity of her predecessors – whose practices she sees as integral to interpreting her own.