I want you to know that I am hiding something from you / since what I might be is uncontainable (2019)
"I want you to know that I am hiding something from you / since what I might be is uncontainable" is a two-part installation is concerned with the perception and visibility of racialized bodies. Nnebe creates an interactive experience for the viewer by playing with opacity and space; the act of navigating the gallery becomes a medium for the work itself. Focused on the process of racialization, specifically on how it impacts Black communities, the work attempts to ground discussions around representation in theory coming from the French Caribbean, as well as African cosmologies and folkloric traditions.
Key words: Black visibility; opacity; stand-point theory; Black spatiality; positionality; phenomneology; hesitation; Fanon; objectification; racial capitalism; the gaze; raciaization; Blackness;
The first room of the installation acts as a game of hide-and-seek that the viewer is unknowingly brought into. Playing on ideas from feminist standpoint theory, here, within the space of the installation, as in society, what is seen and unseen is dictated by one’s positionality.
The second room of the intallation is a light and audio installation that builds on ideas and visual explorations from earlier works (see ‘Somatic Sation’ exhibition, 2017; “Radical Imaginaries”, 2015), this dismantling of the black body visualizes Frantz Fanon’s description of the process of racialization: “my body returned to me spread-eagled, disjointed, redone, draped in mourning on this white winter’s day.”
Photos from Nnebe’s 2015 ‘Radical Imaginaries’ (a project created while studying at McGill University), as well as works from her 2017 solo exhibition ‘Somatic Satiation’ which both inspired the 2019 installation:
The artist would like to acknowledge funding support from the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario.