On October 1st, Thinkspace Projects will open a group show, Perspectives, featuring the works of Zeinab Diomande, Ayobola Kekere-Ekun, Chigozie Obi and Bianca Walker.
Born in 1999, in Virginia (USA) Zeinab Diomande (aka Z the Rat) left Abidjan (Ivory Coast), where she spent her childhood and adolescence, to pursue her university studies in Philadelphia (USA) in 2017. The artist explores the theme of mental health and her experience as a black woman. These themes mark out and feed her warm and colorful world. Adapting what already exists and reinventing it in a way that also shapes a new reality is the main focus of this expression. Diomandé is currently studying at the University of the Arts, pursuing a BFA in Fine Arts with a concentration in painting and drawing.
Chigozie Obi (b. 1997) is a multi-dimensional visual artist. Her work explores experimentation with multiple materials to tell stories formed from personal/societal experiences. Obi’s work authenticates her keen interest for the human aspect of life, the body, beauty standards and the strive for self-acceptance. She aims to create sustained conversations about people and society - the cultural narratives adopted and how it affects people in it, especially women. Chigozie's new series 'A Seat At the Table' showcases women working in different occupations, many of which are still believed or expected to be jobs for men alone but they continue to prove that wrong. ‘A Seat at the Table’ illustrates women of different careers. From low income jobs to the high earners - it seeks to honor women working in all occupational fields, showing them in their element, capturing their stories, highlighting the difficulties they might be facing while working in those occupations and more.
Born in Lagos, Nigeria, Ayobola Kekere-Ekun is a contemporary visual artist who attempts to unravel the connections between the self and identity and how they interface with individual and collective memory via her art. In creating the paintings that make up this body of work, she toys with the most wholesome of ideas/experiences: childhood. Seemingly random and benign scenes of existence are shadowed by objects that become breadcrumbs of the artist's attempts to understand her own trauma and beyond.
Bianca Walker is a 24-year-old, nonbinary, painter from the Bay Area, California. Bianca was raised surrounded by vibrant street art until gentrification began to ravage the place they once called home, leaving colored walls bare. Walker migrated to Louisiana and began their studies at rambling State University where they were submerged in painting and black history. As their education continued, they quickly grew tired of traditional art methods and began to use a drip painting technique that reflects their street art roots. Now developing an MFA thesis at the University of New Orleans, Walker uses these drips as an integral part of their visual language while incorporating archival imagery of the African Diaspora activating a history they can see being erased.
