Floating In Place 2024, Lagos Nigeria

You know that feeling in your dreams, where you think you’re moving through water, weighted and weightless at the same time, expending what feels like a lot of energy, and yet you look up and you haven’t made any progress and you’re still in the same spot you started? Sometimes that’s what it feels like living in the world, as women, as artists, as black women. It seems like the world has been designed to lure us into a false sense of inadequacy, always striving but never measuring up to standards not of our own making. Floating in place is an exhibition that looks at movement metaphorically and what it really means to make progress. What does society ask of us versus what we ask of ourselves? How do we take back our power and make a stand or is there peace to be found in just letting go and moving along with the systems & structures already in place, a wheel forever turning wherever the whims of society takes us? Is there beauty in being still and facing who we are and our place in the world? What are the connecting dots within the contexts of our identities, our histories, and our cultures and how we perceive and operate where success is concerned? Who have we become in our quest for validation and recognition, by themselves noble pursuits, but easily corruptible in a corrupt world? How do we exist and make a path for ourselves outside the metrics of society? What is the cheat code, and do we have access to it? ... This exhibition hopes to confront some truths about the illusion of mobility, especially upward mobility and more importantly generate stimulating dialogue and perspectives about the expectations placed on us by society and by ourselves. It is not about blaming society for what some may perceive as unfair treatment, it is about candidly divesting any illusions surrounding our present realities. We also explore buoyancy, suspended animation, and parallels with the earth floating in place and spinning on its axis the same way a foetus floats in the womb.