Okiki Akinfe and G.A.S. Foundation are inviting young artists and arts students to apply to participate in a group critique or ‘crit’ facilitated by Okiki Akinfe. The guest moderators include artist Chidinma Nnoli, and Tracian Meikle, Director of 1952 Africa, and coordinator of the Africa Accelerator, an artist Incubator program whose young artists will be participating in the crit. The aim of the intimate session is to create a supported environment for networking and peer review, to offer an opportunity to exercise evaluation and critical review skills and to use the presented work as a point of departure for in-depth discussions about practice.
Applications are open to young artists and arts students working in all visual art mediums including fine art, sculpture, performance and moving image. Those interested in participating should complete and submit our short application for consideration before 20th September 2023. Individuals selected to participate in the Young Artist's Critique will be notified by Friday 22nd and will be expected to present their work during the session physically or digitally. Anyone not selected to participate will still be invited to attend in person as an audience member. G.A.S. will be providing transportation from the mainland to the Foundation for the selected artists.
EVENT DETAILS
MEET THE FACILITATORS
Tracian Miekle
Tracian Meikle is a Jamaican curator based between Lagos and Amsterdam. Her work focuses on diasporic blackness, belonging and community-building. She has worked in the field of art and culture as a researcher, moderator and educator in a number of institutions including the Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. Most recently, Tracian was a curator-in-residence at the experimental artspace at The Treehouse. She also leads the work of 1952 Africa, an arts institution dedicated to the support and development of African artists and facilitates their current Arts Accelerator Programme.
Okiki Akinfe
Okikioluwa Akinfe, (born 1999) is London based painter. Her practice centres on creating an alternative to the conventional archive, encompassing 'The Black Lens', a subversive tool towards avoiding stereotypes by demonstrating their absurdity. Authenticity that involves the othered experience, refocusing the position of the White Gaze to a Black Gaze. The figures within the paintings are visible and un-visible, investigating placing and un-placing ghostly Black figures in landscapes, within their own realities, on their own terms. A space in world building for these figures to exist in a non-social geographical space, paused in their own time agency, resting, in perseverance of time.
