Elegies: Still Lifes in Contemporary Art

Elegies: Still Lifes in Contemporary Art is a group exhibition bringing together an international collection of artists who have disrupted or extended the traditional presentation of still lifes. The artists have appropriated the genre in order to create works within a framework of Black diasporic identities, histories and collective experiences. Their works are expressed through various mediums, including painting, photography, sculpture, printmaking, performance and installation. Many of the artists are primarily known for portraiture, making these still lifes compelling outliers in their practices. A central discourse in this exhibition considers Blackness in relation to the existential question, “How does an artist create work about the body without the body being present?” resulting in political, historical and art historical interventions.