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A suited white man sits across from a glammed-up black woman, in some brightly lit outdoor dining-area, and tells her in monotone that she has beautiful eyes, beautiful lips, beautiful hair and beautiful style before saying ‘Tell me your deepest, darkest secret’. The woman – “Rachel, from Detroit” – hesitates, searching. It’s a clip from some reality TV show and is one of the many fragments of video that make up Ebun Sodipo’s Nasty Girl (Sharpest Girl in Town): the centrepiece to Sodipo’s exhibition of the same name at VO Curations. Nasty Girl is a 24-minute-long looping montage: a constantly shifting digital collage, in which clips play and re-play, pause, overlap and synchronise. At first the selection of material appears random: a vogueing Santa Claus; a seal bobbing up through an ice hole; a burning wind-turbine. However common themes soon appear: scenes of nature, references to Black culture and history, images of sexuality and desire, portrayals of femininity, and a strong through-line of humour. The other nine works in the show are all collages, appearing like stills from the video, comprised of images along the same themes and mounted onto reflective, shimmering mylar.
All the images and video clips are found material, sourced from the internet, and Sodipo’s selection and stitching together of them is considered and subtle, with a lasting and unravelling impact. The use of video montage, with clips played, stopped, and re-played, evokes the personalised flow of images of someone’s Instagram feed or Youtube ‘Suggested’ sidebar: the heady, often overwhelming, universe of visual material we are exposed to online which, through algorithms and our own online behaviour, is sifted through to become a very personal library. In this sense, Sodipo’s collection of stills and clips becomes a glimpse into a personal archive, and in turn a reflection of an identity. The subject matter and style of found imagery is broad, from reality TV to nature documentary and home-video but is woven together with these common themes to create a sense of wholeness. Sodipo’s video presents a strong command of collage as a medium, tool, aesthetic, and means of understanding.
%27.jpg)
The collage pieces are slightly less emphatic in their impact: a lot of the images are quite dark, and they are all glossed with resin, making them harder to identify – made even harder by the lighting in the first exhibition space. They have a distinctly hand-made quality – the textures are very tactile, and they appear to have warped in the glossing process. Although this creates a sense that they are unfinished, like preparatory sketches for the video, it also offers a welcome contrast to the digital two-dimensional presentation of Nasty Girl. The collages also allow for longer meditation on some of the material, particularly the included text quotations, bold and reading like slogans. Again, Sodipo’s curation of material has an intriguing power infused with the very personal: the collages feel like sheets out of a scrapbook, pages from an encyclopaedia of an identity. As one text quotation states - in a camp note of self-congratulation - these pieces example: ‘the art of autobiography’.
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Desire is present here in all its forms: there is lust for another body – sculpted abs contorting under a shower; romantic desire; feelings of being desired; desires for success and fame – a woman in a grainy home-video tells the camera: ‘I already am somebody…I just wanna be a rich somebody’; hope and desire for political change– the legendary Marsha P. Johnson demanding gay rights. There are even feelings of wonder akin to desire – a hand caresses the leaf of a giant aloe vera plant; the recurring images of natural phenomena evoke a sensation of awe. Desire is presented as multi-faceted, experienced inwardly and towards others, potent and wondrous.
The material coalesces around Black and queer subjectivities. Black history and culture are present throughout, from footage of MP Diane Abbott winning her first election in 1987, to images of Theaster Gates’ ‘Black Chapel’ Serpentine pavilion in 2022 and the soaring voice of Leontyne Price – the first African American soprano to receive international acclaim. There are images of Megan Thee Stallion, Whitney, Aretha Franklin and numerous shots of Naomi Campbell. The viral video of a young black woman twerking on a white man before he falls back onto the floor from 2017, is included alongside footage of black women dancing in corridors, their bedrooms and public spaces. Black identity is presented as being far from monolithic or constructed within institutions and systems of power: it is joyous, deeply personal, and also profoundly collective.
Similarly, there are rich, continuous references to queer sensibilities, varying from the explicit – two men kissing – to the implied – the viral video of gay-icon Mariah Carey’s response to the ‘bottle cap’ challenge. The works are infused with a sense of camp: the repeated juxtaposition of scenes of destruction or danger (such as a burning wind turbine) and those of humour or beauty evoke a strong feeling of affectation and irony. The clips of nature’s phenomena – such as a floating pink jellyfish - become illustrations of the monstrously queer. A trans-femme subjectivity is implicit through the depictions of glamour, femininity, longing and the wondrous: an identity forged through, and that finds its power within, its slippery relationships with heteronormative standards of gender, beauty and womanhood.
Sodipo, who is trans herself, is offering up a beautiful, tender and funny portrait of a Black trans-femme identity, which is also fluid and shifting. A note in the exhibition text states: ‘Ebun Sodipo makes work for those who will come after: the Black trans people of the future. Her interdisciplinary practice narrates her construction of a Black trans-feminine self after slavery and colonialism.’ This is a powerful mission with strong moral intention. It is made more poignant by underlining the fact that archives have the potential to slip between the deeply personal and the collective: the material Sodipo has collected evokes very private feelings whilst offering infinite points of connection and collective experience. Identity, offered here, also shifts between the singular and shared. Sodipo’s mastery of her material is a confident exploration of transness, which feels necessary in the current socio-political climate – as one image proudly states: ‘I am a woman. I feel great.’
Fluidity and fluctuation are central to the exhibition: water is a repeating motif throughout the video and the floor between the screen and the seating area is covered in reflective PVC, creating blurry, rippling reflections of the montage as it plays. This is mirrored in the silvery mylar backing which forms the base to all the collage works. Everything is in motion and rippling with potential meaning. It is this sense of fluidity that is the most emphatic common theme; all that may often be understood as solid or defined – desire, identity, history - is in fact the opposite. Sodipo’s exploration of these big ideas is moving and effectively conveyed.
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Ebun Sodipo’s work has recently been given some impressive, and well-deserved, platforms: from performing at Frieze Live in 2021 to her first institutional solo exhibition at the Goldsmiths CCA which closed in February. She has also held residencies at Gasworks, Porthmeor Studios and Rhubaba Gallery, and Nasty Girl (Sharpest Girl in Town) was developed during her residency at VO Curations in 2022. The exhibition is a continuation of an experimental collection of works across live performance and writing - ‘my body reminds us of water’ (2020-) explores notions of embodied and ancestral knowledge in relation to black transness and the visual phenomenon of water moving, shifting and rippling light. Sodipo shows great promise in being an artist exploring an identity that is still radical and widely oppressed. Her practice will surely continue to be given even bigger and brighter stages.
Ebun Sodipo: Nasty Girl (The Sharpest Girl in Town) is showing at V.O. Curations until 5th April 2023.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
A suited white man sits across from a glammed-up black woman, in some brightly lit outdoor dining-area, and tells her in monotone that she has beautiful eyes, beautiful lips, beautiful hair and beautiful style before saying ‘Tell me your deepest, darkest secret’. The woman – “Rachel, from Detroit” – hesitates, searching. It’s a clip from some reality TV show and is one of the many fragments of video that make up Ebun Sodipo’s Nasty Girl (Sharpest Girl in Town): the centrepiece to Sodipo’s exhibition of the same name at VO Curations. Nasty Girl is a 24-minute-long looping montage: a constantly shifting digital collage, in which clips play and re-play, pause, overlap and synchronise. At first the selection of material appears random: a vogueing Santa Claus; a seal bobbing up through an ice hole; a burning wind-turbine. However common themes soon appear: scenes of nature, references to Black culture and history, images of sexuality and desire, portrayals of femininity, and a strong through-line of humour. The other nine works in the show are all collages, appearing like stills from the video, comprised of images along the same themes and mounted onto reflective, shimmering mylar.
All the images and video clips are found material, sourced from the internet, and Sodipo’s selection and stitching together of them is considered and subtle, with a lasting and unravelling impact. The use of video montage, with clips played, stopped, and re-played, evokes the personalised flow of images of someone’s Instagram feed or Youtube ‘Suggested’ sidebar: the heady, often overwhelming, universe of visual material we are exposed to online which, through algorithms and our own online behaviour, is sifted through to become a very personal library. In this sense, Sodipo’s collection of stills and clips becomes a glimpse into a personal archive, and in turn a reflection of an identity. The subject matter and style of found imagery is broad, from reality TV to nature documentary and home-video but is woven together with these common themes to create a sense of wholeness. Sodipo’s video presents a strong command of collage as a medium, tool, aesthetic, and means of understanding.
The collage pieces are slightly less emphatic in their impact: a lot of the images are quite dark, and they are all glossed with resin, making them harder to identify – made even harder by the lighting in the first exhibition space. They have a distinctly hand-made quality – the textures are very tactile, and they appear to have warped in the glossing process. Although this creates a sense that they are unfinished, like preparatory sketches for the video, it also offers a welcome contrast to the digital two-dimensional presentation of Nasty Girl. The collages also allow for longer meditation on some of the material, particularly the included text quotations, bold and reading like slogans. Again, Sodipo’s curation of material has an intriguing power infused with the very personal: the collages feel like sheets out of a scrapbook, pages from an encyclopaedia of an identity. As one text quotation states - in a camp note of self-congratulation - these pieces example: ‘the art of autobiography’.
Desire is present here in all its forms: there is lust for another body – sculpted abs contorting under a shower; romantic desire; feelings of being desired; desires for success and fame – a woman in a grainy home-video tells the camera: ‘I already am somebody…I just wanna be a rich somebody’; hope and desire for political change– the legendary Marsha P. Johnson demanding gay rights. There are even feelings of wonder akin to desire – a hand caresses the leaf of a giant aloe vera plant; the recurring images of natural phenomena evoke a sensation of awe. Desire is presented as multi-faceted, experienced inwardly and towards others, potent and wondrous.
The material coalesces around Black and queer subjectivities. Black history and culture are present throughout, from footage of MP Diane Abbott winning her first election in 1987, to images of Theaster Gates’ ‘Black Chapel’ Serpentine pavilion in 2022 and the soaring voice of Leontyne Price – the first African American soprano to receive international acclaim. There are images of Megan Thee Stallion, Whitney, Aretha Franklin and numerous shots of Naomi Campbell. The viral video of a young black woman twerking on a white man before he falls back onto the floor from 2017, is included alongside footage of black women dancing in corridors, their bedrooms and public spaces. Black identity is presented as being far from monolithic or constructed within institutions and systems of power: it is joyous, deeply personal, and also profoundly collective.
Similarly, there are rich, continuous references to queer sensibilities, varying from the explicit – two men kissing – to the implied – the viral video of gay-icon Mariah Carey’s response to the ‘bottle cap’ challenge. The works are infused with a sense of camp: the repeated juxtaposition of scenes of destruction or danger (such as a burning wind turbine) and those of humour or beauty evoke a strong feeling of affectation and irony. The clips of nature’s phenomena – such as a floating pink jellyfish - become illustrations of the monstrously queer. A trans-femme subjectivity is implicit through the depictions of glamour, femininity, longing and the wondrous: an identity forged through, and that finds its power within, its slippery relationships with heteronormative standards of gender, beauty and womanhood.
Sodipo, who is trans herself, is offering up a beautiful, tender and funny portrait of a Black trans-femme identity, which is also fluid and shifting. A note in the exhibition text states: ‘Ebun Sodipo makes work for those who will come after: the Black trans people of the future. Her interdisciplinary practice narrates her construction of a Black trans-feminine self after slavery and colonialism.’ This is a powerful mission with strong moral intention. It is made more poignant by underlining the fact that archives have the potential to slip between the deeply personal and the collective: the material Sodipo has collected evokes very private feelings whilst offering infinite points of connection and collective experience. Identity, offered here, also shifts between the singular and shared. Sodipo’s mastery of her material is a confident exploration of transness, which feels necessary in the current socio-political climate – as one image proudly states: ‘I am a woman. I feel great.’
Fluidity and fluctuation are central to the exhibition: water is a repeating motif throughout the video and the floor between the screen and the seating area is covered in reflective PVC, creating blurry, rippling reflections of the montage as it plays. This is mirrored in the silvery mylar backing which forms the base to all the collage works. Everything is in motion and rippling with potential meaning. It is this sense of fluidity that is the most emphatic common theme; all that may often be understood as solid or defined – desire, identity, history - is in fact the opposite. Sodipo’s exploration of these big ideas is moving and effectively conveyed.
Ebun Sodipo’s work has recently been given some impressive, and well-deserved, platforms: from performing at Frieze Live in 2021 to her first institutional solo exhibition at the Goldsmiths CCA which closed in February. She has also held residencies at Gasworks, Porthmeor Studios and Rhubaba Gallery, and Nasty Girl (Sharpest Girl in Town) was developed during her residency at VO Curations in 2022. The exhibition is a continuation of an experimental collection of works across live performance and writing - ‘my body reminds us of water’ (2020-) explores notions of embodied and ancestral knowledge in relation to black transness and the visual phenomenon of water moving, shifting and rippling light. Sodipo shows great promise in being an artist exploring an identity that is still radical and widely oppressed. Her practice will surely continue to be given even bigger and brighter stages.
Ebun Sodipo: Nasty Girl (The Sharpest Girl in Town) is showing at V.O. Curations until 5th April 2023.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
A suited white man sits across from a glammed-up black woman, in some brightly lit outdoor dining-area, and tells her in monotone that she has beautiful eyes, beautiful lips, beautiful hair and beautiful style before saying ‘Tell me your deepest, darkest secret’. The woman – “Rachel, from Detroit” – hesitates, searching. It’s a clip from some reality TV show and is one of the many fragments of video that make up Ebun Sodipo’s Nasty Girl (Sharpest Girl in Town): the centrepiece to Sodipo’s exhibition of the same name at VO Curations. Nasty Girl is a 24-minute-long looping montage: a constantly shifting digital collage, in which clips play and re-play, pause, overlap and synchronise. At first the selection of material appears random: a vogueing Santa Claus; a seal bobbing up through an ice hole; a burning wind-turbine. However common themes soon appear: scenes of nature, references to Black culture and history, images of sexuality and desire, portrayals of femininity, and a strong through-line of humour. The other nine works in the show are all collages, appearing like stills from the video, comprised of images along the same themes and mounted onto reflective, shimmering mylar.
All the images and video clips are found material, sourced from the internet, and Sodipo’s selection and stitching together of them is considered and subtle, with a lasting and unravelling impact. The use of video montage, with clips played, stopped, and re-played, evokes the personalised flow of images of someone’s Instagram feed or Youtube ‘Suggested’ sidebar: the heady, often overwhelming, universe of visual material we are exposed to online which, through algorithms and our own online behaviour, is sifted through to become a very personal library. In this sense, Sodipo’s collection of stills and clips becomes a glimpse into a personal archive, and in turn a reflection of an identity. The subject matter and style of found imagery is broad, from reality TV to nature documentary and home-video but is woven together with these common themes to create a sense of wholeness. Sodipo’s video presents a strong command of collage as a medium, tool, aesthetic, and means of understanding.
The collage pieces are slightly less emphatic in their impact: a lot of the images are quite dark, and they are all glossed with resin, making them harder to identify – made even harder by the lighting in the first exhibition space. They have a distinctly hand-made quality – the textures are very tactile, and they appear to have warped in the glossing process. Although this creates a sense that they are unfinished, like preparatory sketches for the video, it also offers a welcome contrast to the digital two-dimensional presentation of Nasty Girl. The collages also allow for longer meditation on some of the material, particularly the included text quotations, bold and reading like slogans. Again, Sodipo’s curation of material has an intriguing power infused with the very personal: the collages feel like sheets out of a scrapbook, pages from an encyclopaedia of an identity. As one text quotation states - in a camp note of self-congratulation - these pieces example: ‘the art of autobiography’.
Desire is present here in all its forms: there is lust for another body – sculpted abs contorting under a shower; romantic desire; feelings of being desired; desires for success and fame – a woman in a grainy home-video tells the camera: ‘I already am somebody…I just wanna be a rich somebody’; hope and desire for political change– the legendary Marsha P. Johnson demanding gay rights. There are even feelings of wonder akin to desire – a hand caresses the leaf of a giant aloe vera plant; the recurring images of natural phenomena evoke a sensation of awe. Desire is presented as multi-faceted, experienced inwardly and towards others, potent and wondrous.
The material coalesces around Black and queer subjectivities. Black history and culture are present throughout, from footage of MP Diane Abbott winning her first election in 1987, to images of Theaster Gates’ ‘Black Chapel’ Serpentine pavilion in 2022 and the soaring voice of Leontyne Price – the first African American soprano to receive international acclaim. There are images of Megan Thee Stallion, Whitney, Aretha Franklin and numerous shots of Naomi Campbell. The viral video of a young black woman twerking on a white man before he falls back onto the floor from 2017, is included alongside footage of black women dancing in corridors, their bedrooms and public spaces. Black identity is presented as being far from monolithic or constructed within institutions and systems of power: it is joyous, deeply personal, and also profoundly collective.
Similarly, there are rich, continuous references to queer sensibilities, varying from the explicit – two men kissing – to the implied – the viral video of gay-icon Mariah Carey’s response to the ‘bottle cap’ challenge. The works are infused with a sense of camp: the repeated juxtaposition of scenes of destruction or danger (such as a burning wind turbine) and those of humour or beauty evoke a strong feeling of affectation and irony. The clips of nature’s phenomena – such as a floating pink jellyfish - become illustrations of the monstrously queer. A trans-femme subjectivity is implicit through the depictions of glamour, femininity, longing and the wondrous: an identity forged through, and that finds its power within, its slippery relationships with heteronormative standards of gender, beauty and womanhood.
Sodipo, who is trans herself, is offering up a beautiful, tender and funny portrait of a Black trans-femme identity, which is also fluid and shifting. A note in the exhibition text states: ‘Ebun Sodipo makes work for those who will come after: the Black trans people of the future. Her interdisciplinary practice narrates her construction of a Black trans-feminine self after slavery and colonialism.’ This is a powerful mission with strong moral intention. It is made more poignant by underlining the fact that archives have the potential to slip between the deeply personal and the collective: the material Sodipo has collected evokes very private feelings whilst offering infinite points of connection and collective experience. Identity, offered here, also shifts between the singular and shared. Sodipo’s mastery of her material is a confident exploration of transness, which feels necessary in the current socio-political climate – as one image proudly states: ‘I am a woman. I feel great.’
Fluidity and fluctuation are central to the exhibition: water is a repeating motif throughout the video and the floor between the screen and the seating area is covered in reflective PVC, creating blurry, rippling reflections of the montage as it plays. This is mirrored in the silvery mylar backing which forms the base to all the collage works. Everything is in motion and rippling with potential meaning. It is this sense of fluidity that is the most emphatic common theme; all that may often be understood as solid or defined – desire, identity, history - is in fact the opposite. Sodipo’s exploration of these big ideas is moving and effectively conveyed.
Ebun Sodipo’s work has recently been given some impressive, and well-deserved, platforms: from performing at Frieze Live in 2021 to her first institutional solo exhibition at the Goldsmiths CCA which closed in February. She has also held residencies at Gasworks, Porthmeor Studios and Rhubaba Gallery, and Nasty Girl (Sharpest Girl in Town) was developed during her residency at VO Curations in 2022. The exhibition is a continuation of an experimental collection of works across live performance and writing - ‘my body reminds us of water’ (2020-) explores notions of embodied and ancestral knowledge in relation to black transness and the visual phenomenon of water moving, shifting and rippling light. Sodipo shows great promise in being an artist exploring an identity that is still radical and widely oppressed. Her practice will surely continue to be given even bigger and brighter stages.
Ebun Sodipo: Nasty Girl (The Sharpest Girl in Town) is showing at V.O. Curations until 5th April 2023.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
A suited white man sits across from a glammed-up black woman, in some brightly lit outdoor dining-area, and tells her in monotone that she has beautiful eyes, beautiful lips, beautiful hair and beautiful style before saying ‘Tell me your deepest, darkest secret’. The woman – “Rachel, from Detroit” – hesitates, searching. It’s a clip from some reality TV show and is one of the many fragments of video that make up Ebun Sodipo’s Nasty Girl (Sharpest Girl in Town): the centrepiece to Sodipo’s exhibition of the same name at VO Curations. Nasty Girl is a 24-minute-long looping montage: a constantly shifting digital collage, in which clips play and re-play, pause, overlap and synchronise. At first the selection of material appears random: a vogueing Santa Claus; a seal bobbing up through an ice hole; a burning wind-turbine. However common themes soon appear: scenes of nature, references to Black culture and history, images of sexuality and desire, portrayals of femininity, and a strong through-line of humour. The other nine works in the show are all collages, appearing like stills from the video, comprised of images along the same themes and mounted onto reflective, shimmering mylar.
All the images and video clips are found material, sourced from the internet, and Sodipo’s selection and stitching together of them is considered and subtle, with a lasting and unravelling impact. The use of video montage, with clips played, stopped, and re-played, evokes the personalised flow of images of someone’s Instagram feed or Youtube ‘Suggested’ sidebar: the heady, often overwhelming, universe of visual material we are exposed to online which, through algorithms and our own online behaviour, is sifted through to become a very personal library. In this sense, Sodipo’s collection of stills and clips becomes a glimpse into a personal archive, and in turn a reflection of an identity. The subject matter and style of found imagery is broad, from reality TV to nature documentary and home-video but is woven together with these common themes to create a sense of wholeness. Sodipo’s video presents a strong command of collage as a medium, tool, aesthetic, and means of understanding.
The collage pieces are slightly less emphatic in their impact: a lot of the images are quite dark, and they are all glossed with resin, making them harder to identify – made even harder by the lighting in the first exhibition space. They have a distinctly hand-made quality – the textures are very tactile, and they appear to have warped in the glossing process. Although this creates a sense that they are unfinished, like preparatory sketches for the video, it also offers a welcome contrast to the digital two-dimensional presentation of Nasty Girl. The collages also allow for longer meditation on some of the material, particularly the included text quotations, bold and reading like slogans. Again, Sodipo’s curation of material has an intriguing power infused with the very personal: the collages feel like sheets out of a scrapbook, pages from an encyclopaedia of an identity. As one text quotation states - in a camp note of self-congratulation - these pieces example: ‘the art of autobiography’.
Desire is present here in all its forms: there is lust for another body – sculpted abs contorting under a shower; romantic desire; feelings of being desired; desires for success and fame – a woman in a grainy home-video tells the camera: ‘I already am somebody…I just wanna be a rich somebody’; hope and desire for political change– the legendary Marsha P. Johnson demanding gay rights. There are even feelings of wonder akin to desire – a hand caresses the leaf of a giant aloe vera plant; the recurring images of natural phenomena evoke a sensation of awe. Desire is presented as multi-faceted, experienced inwardly and towards others, potent and wondrous.
The material coalesces around Black and queer subjectivities. Black history and culture are present throughout, from footage of MP Diane Abbott winning her first election in 1987, to images of Theaster Gates’ ‘Black Chapel’ Serpentine pavilion in 2022 and the soaring voice of Leontyne Price – the first African American soprano to receive international acclaim. There are images of Megan Thee Stallion, Whitney, Aretha Franklin and numerous shots of Naomi Campbell. The viral video of a young black woman twerking on a white man before he falls back onto the floor from 2017, is included alongside footage of black women dancing in corridors, their bedrooms and public spaces. Black identity is presented as being far from monolithic or constructed within institutions and systems of power: it is joyous, deeply personal, and also profoundly collective.
Similarly, there are rich, continuous references to queer sensibilities, varying from the explicit – two men kissing – to the implied – the viral video of gay-icon Mariah Carey’s response to the ‘bottle cap’ challenge. The works are infused with a sense of camp: the repeated juxtaposition of scenes of destruction or danger (such as a burning wind turbine) and those of humour or beauty evoke a strong feeling of affectation and irony. The clips of nature’s phenomena – such as a floating pink jellyfish - become illustrations of the monstrously queer. A trans-femme subjectivity is implicit through the depictions of glamour, femininity, longing and the wondrous: an identity forged through, and that finds its power within, its slippery relationships with heteronormative standards of gender, beauty and womanhood.
Sodipo, who is trans herself, is offering up a beautiful, tender and funny portrait of a Black trans-femme identity, which is also fluid and shifting. A note in the exhibition text states: ‘Ebun Sodipo makes work for those who will come after: the Black trans people of the future. Her interdisciplinary practice narrates her construction of a Black trans-feminine self after slavery and colonialism.’ This is a powerful mission with strong moral intention. It is made more poignant by underlining the fact that archives have the potential to slip between the deeply personal and the collective: the material Sodipo has collected evokes very private feelings whilst offering infinite points of connection and collective experience. Identity, offered here, also shifts between the singular and shared. Sodipo’s mastery of her material is a confident exploration of transness, which feels necessary in the current socio-political climate – as one image proudly states: ‘I am a woman. I feel great.’
Fluidity and fluctuation are central to the exhibition: water is a repeating motif throughout the video and the floor between the screen and the seating area is covered in reflective PVC, creating blurry, rippling reflections of the montage as it plays. This is mirrored in the silvery mylar backing which forms the base to all the collage works. Everything is in motion and rippling with potential meaning. It is this sense of fluidity that is the most emphatic common theme; all that may often be understood as solid or defined – desire, identity, history - is in fact the opposite. Sodipo’s exploration of these big ideas is moving and effectively conveyed.
Ebun Sodipo’s work has recently been given some impressive, and well-deserved, platforms: from performing at Frieze Live in 2021 to her first institutional solo exhibition at the Goldsmiths CCA which closed in February. She has also held residencies at Gasworks, Porthmeor Studios and Rhubaba Gallery, and Nasty Girl (Sharpest Girl in Town) was developed during her residency at VO Curations in 2022. The exhibition is a continuation of an experimental collection of works across live performance and writing - ‘my body reminds us of water’ (2020-) explores notions of embodied and ancestral knowledge in relation to black transness and the visual phenomenon of water moving, shifting and rippling light. Sodipo shows great promise in being an artist exploring an identity that is still radical and widely oppressed. Her practice will surely continue to be given even bigger and brighter stages.
Ebun Sodipo: Nasty Girl (The Sharpest Girl in Town) is showing at V.O. Curations until 5th April 2023.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
A suited white man sits across from a glammed-up black woman, in some brightly lit outdoor dining-area, and tells her in monotone that she has beautiful eyes, beautiful lips, beautiful hair and beautiful style before saying ‘Tell me your deepest, darkest secret’. The woman – “Rachel, from Detroit” – hesitates, searching. It’s a clip from some reality TV show and is one of the many fragments of video that make up Ebun Sodipo’s Nasty Girl (Sharpest Girl in Town): the centrepiece to Sodipo’s exhibition of the same name at VO Curations. Nasty Girl is a 24-minute-long looping montage: a constantly shifting digital collage, in which clips play and re-play, pause, overlap and synchronise. At first the selection of material appears random: a vogueing Santa Claus; a seal bobbing up through an ice hole; a burning wind-turbine. However common themes soon appear: scenes of nature, references to Black culture and history, images of sexuality and desire, portrayals of femininity, and a strong through-line of humour. The other nine works in the show are all collages, appearing like stills from the video, comprised of images along the same themes and mounted onto reflective, shimmering mylar.
All the images and video clips are found material, sourced from the internet, and Sodipo’s selection and stitching together of them is considered and subtle, with a lasting and unravelling impact. The use of video montage, with clips played, stopped, and re-played, evokes the personalised flow of images of someone’s Instagram feed or Youtube ‘Suggested’ sidebar: the heady, often overwhelming, universe of visual material we are exposed to online which, through algorithms and our own online behaviour, is sifted through to become a very personal library. In this sense, Sodipo’s collection of stills and clips becomes a glimpse into a personal archive, and in turn a reflection of an identity. The subject matter and style of found imagery is broad, from reality TV to nature documentary and home-video but is woven together with these common themes to create a sense of wholeness. Sodipo’s video presents a strong command of collage as a medium, tool, aesthetic, and means of understanding.
The collage pieces are slightly less emphatic in their impact: a lot of the images are quite dark, and they are all glossed with resin, making them harder to identify – made even harder by the lighting in the first exhibition space. They have a distinctly hand-made quality – the textures are very tactile, and they appear to have warped in the glossing process. Although this creates a sense that they are unfinished, like preparatory sketches for the video, it also offers a welcome contrast to the digital two-dimensional presentation of Nasty Girl. The collages also allow for longer meditation on some of the material, particularly the included text quotations, bold and reading like slogans. Again, Sodipo’s curation of material has an intriguing power infused with the very personal: the collages feel like sheets out of a scrapbook, pages from an encyclopaedia of an identity. As one text quotation states - in a camp note of self-congratulation - these pieces example: ‘the art of autobiography’.
Desire is present here in all its forms: there is lust for another body – sculpted abs contorting under a shower; romantic desire; feelings of being desired; desires for success and fame – a woman in a grainy home-video tells the camera: ‘I already am somebody…I just wanna be a rich somebody’; hope and desire for political change– the legendary Marsha P. Johnson demanding gay rights. There are even feelings of wonder akin to desire – a hand caresses the leaf of a giant aloe vera plant; the recurring images of natural phenomena evoke a sensation of awe. Desire is presented as multi-faceted, experienced inwardly and towards others, potent and wondrous.
The material coalesces around Black and queer subjectivities. Black history and culture are present throughout, from footage of MP Diane Abbott winning her first election in 1987, to images of Theaster Gates’ ‘Black Chapel’ Serpentine pavilion in 2022 and the soaring voice of Leontyne Price – the first African American soprano to receive international acclaim. There are images of Megan Thee Stallion, Whitney, Aretha Franklin and numerous shots of Naomi Campbell. The viral video of a young black woman twerking on a white man before he falls back onto the floor from 2017, is included alongside footage of black women dancing in corridors, their bedrooms and public spaces. Black identity is presented as being far from monolithic or constructed within institutions and systems of power: it is joyous, deeply personal, and also profoundly collective.
Similarly, there are rich, continuous references to queer sensibilities, varying from the explicit – two men kissing – to the implied – the viral video of gay-icon Mariah Carey’s response to the ‘bottle cap’ challenge. The works are infused with a sense of camp: the repeated juxtaposition of scenes of destruction or danger (such as a burning wind turbine) and those of humour or beauty evoke a strong feeling of affectation and irony. The clips of nature’s phenomena – such as a floating pink jellyfish - become illustrations of the monstrously queer. A trans-femme subjectivity is implicit through the depictions of glamour, femininity, longing and the wondrous: an identity forged through, and that finds its power within, its slippery relationships with heteronormative standards of gender, beauty and womanhood.
Sodipo, who is trans herself, is offering up a beautiful, tender and funny portrait of a Black trans-femme identity, which is also fluid and shifting. A note in the exhibition text states: ‘Ebun Sodipo makes work for those who will come after: the Black trans people of the future. Her interdisciplinary practice narrates her construction of a Black trans-feminine self after slavery and colonialism.’ This is a powerful mission with strong moral intention. It is made more poignant by underlining the fact that archives have the potential to slip between the deeply personal and the collective: the material Sodipo has collected evokes very private feelings whilst offering infinite points of connection and collective experience. Identity, offered here, also shifts between the singular and shared. Sodipo’s mastery of her material is a confident exploration of transness, which feels necessary in the current socio-political climate – as one image proudly states: ‘I am a woman. I feel great.’
Fluidity and fluctuation are central to the exhibition: water is a repeating motif throughout the video and the floor between the screen and the seating area is covered in reflective PVC, creating blurry, rippling reflections of the montage as it plays. This is mirrored in the silvery mylar backing which forms the base to all the collage works. Everything is in motion and rippling with potential meaning. It is this sense of fluidity that is the most emphatic common theme; all that may often be understood as solid or defined – desire, identity, history - is in fact the opposite. Sodipo’s exploration of these big ideas is moving and effectively conveyed.
Ebun Sodipo’s work has recently been given some impressive, and well-deserved, platforms: from performing at Frieze Live in 2021 to her first institutional solo exhibition at the Goldsmiths CCA which closed in February. She has also held residencies at Gasworks, Porthmeor Studios and Rhubaba Gallery, and Nasty Girl (Sharpest Girl in Town) was developed during her residency at VO Curations in 2022. The exhibition is a continuation of an experimental collection of works across live performance and writing - ‘my body reminds us of water’ (2020-) explores notions of embodied and ancestral knowledge in relation to black transness and the visual phenomenon of water moving, shifting and rippling light. Sodipo shows great promise in being an artist exploring an identity that is still radical and widely oppressed. Her practice will surely continue to be given even bigger and brighter stages.
Ebun Sodipo: Nasty Girl (The Sharpest Girl in Town) is showing at V.O. Curations until 5th April 2023.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
A suited white man sits across from a glammed-up black woman, in some brightly lit outdoor dining-area, and tells her in monotone that she has beautiful eyes, beautiful lips, beautiful hair and beautiful style before saying ‘Tell me your deepest, darkest secret’. The woman – “Rachel, from Detroit” – hesitates, searching. It’s a clip from some reality TV show and is one of the many fragments of video that make up Ebun Sodipo’s Nasty Girl (Sharpest Girl in Town): the centrepiece to Sodipo’s exhibition of the same name at VO Curations. Nasty Girl is a 24-minute-long looping montage: a constantly shifting digital collage, in which clips play and re-play, pause, overlap and synchronise. At first the selection of material appears random: a vogueing Santa Claus; a seal bobbing up through an ice hole; a burning wind-turbine. However common themes soon appear: scenes of nature, references to Black culture and history, images of sexuality and desire, portrayals of femininity, and a strong through-line of humour. The other nine works in the show are all collages, appearing like stills from the video, comprised of images along the same themes and mounted onto reflective, shimmering mylar.
All the images and video clips are found material, sourced from the internet, and Sodipo’s selection and stitching together of them is considered and subtle, with a lasting and unravelling impact. The use of video montage, with clips played, stopped, and re-played, evokes the personalised flow of images of someone’s Instagram feed or Youtube ‘Suggested’ sidebar: the heady, often overwhelming, universe of visual material we are exposed to online which, through algorithms and our own online behaviour, is sifted through to become a very personal library. In this sense, Sodipo’s collection of stills and clips becomes a glimpse into a personal archive, and in turn a reflection of an identity. The subject matter and style of found imagery is broad, from reality TV to nature documentary and home-video but is woven together with these common themes to create a sense of wholeness. Sodipo’s video presents a strong command of collage as a medium, tool, aesthetic, and means of understanding.
The collage pieces are slightly less emphatic in their impact: a lot of the images are quite dark, and they are all glossed with resin, making them harder to identify – made even harder by the lighting in the first exhibition space. They have a distinctly hand-made quality – the textures are very tactile, and they appear to have warped in the glossing process. Although this creates a sense that they are unfinished, like preparatory sketches for the video, it also offers a welcome contrast to the digital two-dimensional presentation of Nasty Girl. The collages also allow for longer meditation on some of the material, particularly the included text quotations, bold and reading like slogans. Again, Sodipo’s curation of material has an intriguing power infused with the very personal: the collages feel like sheets out of a scrapbook, pages from an encyclopaedia of an identity. As one text quotation states - in a camp note of self-congratulation - these pieces example: ‘the art of autobiography’.
Desire is present here in all its forms: there is lust for another body – sculpted abs contorting under a shower; romantic desire; feelings of being desired; desires for success and fame – a woman in a grainy home-video tells the camera: ‘I already am somebody…I just wanna be a rich somebody’; hope and desire for political change– the legendary Marsha P. Johnson demanding gay rights. There are even feelings of wonder akin to desire – a hand caresses the leaf of a giant aloe vera plant; the recurring images of natural phenomena evoke a sensation of awe. Desire is presented as multi-faceted, experienced inwardly and towards others, potent and wondrous.
The material coalesces around Black and queer subjectivities. Black history and culture are present throughout, from footage of MP Diane Abbott winning her first election in 1987, to images of Theaster Gates’ ‘Black Chapel’ Serpentine pavilion in 2022 and the soaring voice of Leontyne Price – the first African American soprano to receive international acclaim. There are images of Megan Thee Stallion, Whitney, Aretha Franklin and numerous shots of Naomi Campbell. The viral video of a young black woman twerking on a white man before he falls back onto the floor from 2017, is included alongside footage of black women dancing in corridors, their bedrooms and public spaces. Black identity is presented as being far from monolithic or constructed within institutions and systems of power: it is joyous, deeply personal, and also profoundly collective.
Similarly, there are rich, continuous references to queer sensibilities, varying from the explicit – two men kissing – to the implied – the viral video of gay-icon Mariah Carey’s response to the ‘bottle cap’ challenge. The works are infused with a sense of camp: the repeated juxtaposition of scenes of destruction or danger (such as a burning wind turbine) and those of humour or beauty evoke a strong feeling of affectation and irony. The clips of nature’s phenomena – such as a floating pink jellyfish - become illustrations of the monstrously queer. A trans-femme subjectivity is implicit through the depictions of glamour, femininity, longing and the wondrous: an identity forged through, and that finds its power within, its slippery relationships with heteronormative standards of gender, beauty and womanhood.
Sodipo, who is trans herself, is offering up a beautiful, tender and funny portrait of a Black trans-femme identity, which is also fluid and shifting. A note in the exhibition text states: ‘Ebun Sodipo makes work for those who will come after: the Black trans people of the future. Her interdisciplinary practice narrates her construction of a Black trans-feminine self after slavery and colonialism.’ This is a powerful mission with strong moral intention. It is made more poignant by underlining the fact that archives have the potential to slip between the deeply personal and the collective: the material Sodipo has collected evokes very private feelings whilst offering infinite points of connection and collective experience. Identity, offered here, also shifts between the singular and shared. Sodipo’s mastery of her material is a confident exploration of transness, which feels necessary in the current socio-political climate – as one image proudly states: ‘I am a woman. I feel great.’
Fluidity and fluctuation are central to the exhibition: water is a repeating motif throughout the video and the floor between the screen and the seating area is covered in reflective PVC, creating blurry, rippling reflections of the montage as it plays. This is mirrored in the silvery mylar backing which forms the base to all the collage works. Everything is in motion and rippling with potential meaning. It is this sense of fluidity that is the most emphatic common theme; all that may often be understood as solid or defined – desire, identity, history - is in fact the opposite. Sodipo’s exploration of these big ideas is moving and effectively conveyed.
Ebun Sodipo’s work has recently been given some impressive, and well-deserved, platforms: from performing at Frieze Live in 2021 to her first institutional solo exhibition at the Goldsmiths CCA which closed in February. She has also held residencies at Gasworks, Porthmeor Studios and Rhubaba Gallery, and Nasty Girl (Sharpest Girl in Town) was developed during her residency at VO Curations in 2022. The exhibition is a continuation of an experimental collection of works across live performance and writing - ‘my body reminds us of water’ (2020-) explores notions of embodied and ancestral knowledge in relation to black transness and the visual phenomenon of water moving, shifting and rippling light. Sodipo shows great promise in being an artist exploring an identity that is still radical and widely oppressed. Her practice will surely continue to be given even bigger and brighter stages.
Ebun Sodipo: Nasty Girl (The Sharpest Girl in Town) is showing at V.O. Curations until 5th April 2023.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
A suited white man sits across from a glammed-up black woman, in some brightly lit outdoor dining-area, and tells her in monotone that she has beautiful eyes, beautiful lips, beautiful hair and beautiful style before saying ‘Tell me your deepest, darkest secret’. The woman – “Rachel, from Detroit” – hesitates, searching. It’s a clip from some reality TV show and is one of the many fragments of video that make up Ebun Sodipo’s Nasty Girl (Sharpest Girl in Town): the centrepiece to Sodipo’s exhibition of the same name at VO Curations. Nasty Girl is a 24-minute-long looping montage: a constantly shifting digital collage, in which clips play and re-play, pause, overlap and synchronise. At first the selection of material appears random: a vogueing Santa Claus; a seal bobbing up through an ice hole; a burning wind-turbine. However common themes soon appear: scenes of nature, references to Black culture and history, images of sexuality and desire, portrayals of femininity, and a strong through-line of humour. The other nine works in the show are all collages, appearing like stills from the video, comprised of images along the same themes and mounted onto reflective, shimmering mylar.
All the images and video clips are found material, sourced from the internet, and Sodipo’s selection and stitching together of them is considered and subtle, with a lasting and unravelling impact. The use of video montage, with clips played, stopped, and re-played, evokes the personalised flow of images of someone’s Instagram feed or Youtube ‘Suggested’ sidebar: the heady, often overwhelming, universe of visual material we are exposed to online which, through algorithms and our own online behaviour, is sifted through to become a very personal library. In this sense, Sodipo’s collection of stills and clips becomes a glimpse into a personal archive, and in turn a reflection of an identity. The subject matter and style of found imagery is broad, from reality TV to nature documentary and home-video but is woven together with these common themes to create a sense of wholeness. Sodipo’s video presents a strong command of collage as a medium, tool, aesthetic, and means of understanding.
The collage pieces are slightly less emphatic in their impact: a lot of the images are quite dark, and they are all glossed with resin, making them harder to identify – made even harder by the lighting in the first exhibition space. They have a distinctly hand-made quality – the textures are very tactile, and they appear to have warped in the glossing process. Although this creates a sense that they are unfinished, like preparatory sketches for the video, it also offers a welcome contrast to the digital two-dimensional presentation of Nasty Girl. The collages also allow for longer meditation on some of the material, particularly the included text quotations, bold and reading like slogans. Again, Sodipo’s curation of material has an intriguing power infused with the very personal: the collages feel like sheets out of a scrapbook, pages from an encyclopaedia of an identity. As one text quotation states - in a camp note of self-congratulation - these pieces example: ‘the art of autobiography’.
Desire is present here in all its forms: there is lust for another body – sculpted abs contorting under a shower; romantic desire; feelings of being desired; desires for success and fame – a woman in a grainy home-video tells the camera: ‘I already am somebody…I just wanna be a rich somebody’; hope and desire for political change– the legendary Marsha P. Johnson demanding gay rights. There are even feelings of wonder akin to desire – a hand caresses the leaf of a giant aloe vera plant; the recurring images of natural phenomena evoke a sensation of awe. Desire is presented as multi-faceted, experienced inwardly and towards others, potent and wondrous.
The material coalesces around Black and queer subjectivities. Black history and culture are present throughout, from footage of MP Diane Abbott winning her first election in 1987, to images of Theaster Gates’ ‘Black Chapel’ Serpentine pavilion in 2022 and the soaring voice of Leontyne Price – the first African American soprano to receive international acclaim. There are images of Megan Thee Stallion, Whitney, Aretha Franklin and numerous shots of Naomi Campbell. The viral video of a young black woman twerking on a white man before he falls back onto the floor from 2017, is included alongside footage of black women dancing in corridors, their bedrooms and public spaces. Black identity is presented as being far from monolithic or constructed within institutions and systems of power: it is joyous, deeply personal, and also profoundly collective.
Similarly, there are rich, continuous references to queer sensibilities, varying from the explicit – two men kissing – to the implied – the viral video of gay-icon Mariah Carey’s response to the ‘bottle cap’ challenge. The works are infused with a sense of camp: the repeated juxtaposition of scenes of destruction or danger (such as a burning wind turbine) and those of humour or beauty evoke a strong feeling of affectation and irony. The clips of nature’s phenomena – such as a floating pink jellyfish - become illustrations of the monstrously queer. A trans-femme subjectivity is implicit through the depictions of glamour, femininity, longing and the wondrous: an identity forged through, and that finds its power within, its slippery relationships with heteronormative standards of gender, beauty and womanhood.
Sodipo, who is trans herself, is offering up a beautiful, tender and funny portrait of a Black trans-femme identity, which is also fluid and shifting. A note in the exhibition text states: ‘Ebun Sodipo makes work for those who will come after: the Black trans people of the future. Her interdisciplinary practice narrates her construction of a Black trans-feminine self after slavery and colonialism.’ This is a powerful mission with strong moral intention. It is made more poignant by underlining the fact that archives have the potential to slip between the deeply personal and the collective: the material Sodipo has collected evokes very private feelings whilst offering infinite points of connection and collective experience. Identity, offered here, also shifts between the singular and shared. Sodipo’s mastery of her material is a confident exploration of transness, which feels necessary in the current socio-political climate – as one image proudly states: ‘I am a woman. I feel great.’
Fluidity and fluctuation are central to the exhibition: water is a repeating motif throughout the video and the floor between the screen and the seating area is covered in reflective PVC, creating blurry, rippling reflections of the montage as it plays. This is mirrored in the silvery mylar backing which forms the base to all the collage works. Everything is in motion and rippling with potential meaning. It is this sense of fluidity that is the most emphatic common theme; all that may often be understood as solid or defined – desire, identity, history - is in fact the opposite. Sodipo’s exploration of these big ideas is moving and effectively conveyed.
Ebun Sodipo’s work has recently been given some impressive, and well-deserved, platforms: from performing at Frieze Live in 2021 to her first institutional solo exhibition at the Goldsmiths CCA which closed in February. She has also held residencies at Gasworks, Porthmeor Studios and Rhubaba Gallery, and Nasty Girl (Sharpest Girl in Town) was developed during her residency at VO Curations in 2022. The exhibition is a continuation of an experimental collection of works across live performance and writing - ‘my body reminds us of water’ (2020-) explores notions of embodied and ancestral knowledge in relation to black transness and the visual phenomenon of water moving, shifting and rippling light. Sodipo shows great promise in being an artist exploring an identity that is still radical and widely oppressed. Her practice will surely continue to be given even bigger and brighter stages.
Ebun Sodipo: Nasty Girl (The Sharpest Girl in Town) is showing at V.O. Curations until 5th April 2023.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
A suited white man sits across from a glammed-up black woman, in some brightly lit outdoor dining-area, and tells her in monotone that she has beautiful eyes, beautiful lips, beautiful hair and beautiful style before saying ‘Tell me your deepest, darkest secret’. The woman – “Rachel, from Detroit” – hesitates, searching. It’s a clip from some reality TV show and is one of the many fragments of video that make up Ebun Sodipo’s Nasty Girl (Sharpest Girl in Town): the centrepiece to Sodipo’s exhibition of the same name at VO Curations. Nasty Girl is a 24-minute-long looping montage: a constantly shifting digital collage, in which clips play and re-play, pause, overlap and synchronise. At first the selection of material appears random: a vogueing Santa Claus; a seal bobbing up through an ice hole; a burning wind-turbine. However common themes soon appear: scenes of nature, references to Black culture and history, images of sexuality and desire, portrayals of femininity, and a strong through-line of humour. The other nine works in the show are all collages, appearing like stills from the video, comprised of images along the same themes and mounted onto reflective, shimmering mylar.
All the images and video clips are found material, sourced from the internet, and Sodipo’s selection and stitching together of them is considered and subtle, with a lasting and unravelling impact. The use of video montage, with clips played, stopped, and re-played, evokes the personalised flow of images of someone’s Instagram feed or Youtube ‘Suggested’ sidebar: the heady, often overwhelming, universe of visual material we are exposed to online which, through algorithms and our own online behaviour, is sifted through to become a very personal library. In this sense, Sodipo’s collection of stills and clips becomes a glimpse into a personal archive, and in turn a reflection of an identity. The subject matter and style of found imagery is broad, from reality TV to nature documentary and home-video but is woven together with these common themes to create a sense of wholeness. Sodipo’s video presents a strong command of collage as a medium, tool, aesthetic, and means of understanding.
The collage pieces are slightly less emphatic in their impact: a lot of the images are quite dark, and they are all glossed with resin, making them harder to identify – made even harder by the lighting in the first exhibition space. They have a distinctly hand-made quality – the textures are very tactile, and they appear to have warped in the glossing process. Although this creates a sense that they are unfinished, like preparatory sketches for the video, it also offers a welcome contrast to the digital two-dimensional presentation of Nasty Girl. The collages also allow for longer meditation on some of the material, particularly the included text quotations, bold and reading like slogans. Again, Sodipo’s curation of material has an intriguing power infused with the very personal: the collages feel like sheets out of a scrapbook, pages from an encyclopaedia of an identity. As one text quotation states - in a camp note of self-congratulation - these pieces example: ‘the art of autobiography’.
Desire is present here in all its forms: there is lust for another body – sculpted abs contorting under a shower; romantic desire; feelings of being desired; desires for success and fame – a woman in a grainy home-video tells the camera: ‘I already am somebody…I just wanna be a rich somebody’; hope and desire for political change– the legendary Marsha P. Johnson demanding gay rights. There are even feelings of wonder akin to desire – a hand caresses the leaf of a giant aloe vera plant; the recurring images of natural phenomena evoke a sensation of awe. Desire is presented as multi-faceted, experienced inwardly and towards others, potent and wondrous.
The material coalesces around Black and queer subjectivities. Black history and culture are present throughout, from footage of MP Diane Abbott winning her first election in 1987, to images of Theaster Gates’ ‘Black Chapel’ Serpentine pavilion in 2022 and the soaring voice of Leontyne Price – the first African American soprano to receive international acclaim. There are images of Megan Thee Stallion, Whitney, Aretha Franklin and numerous shots of Naomi Campbell. The viral video of a young black woman twerking on a white man before he falls back onto the floor from 2017, is included alongside footage of black women dancing in corridors, their bedrooms and public spaces. Black identity is presented as being far from monolithic or constructed within institutions and systems of power: it is joyous, deeply personal, and also profoundly collective.
Similarly, there are rich, continuous references to queer sensibilities, varying from the explicit – two men kissing – to the implied – the viral video of gay-icon Mariah Carey’s response to the ‘bottle cap’ challenge. The works are infused with a sense of camp: the repeated juxtaposition of scenes of destruction or danger (such as a burning wind turbine) and those of humour or beauty evoke a strong feeling of affectation and irony. The clips of nature’s phenomena – such as a floating pink jellyfish - become illustrations of the monstrously queer. A trans-femme subjectivity is implicit through the depictions of glamour, femininity, longing and the wondrous: an identity forged through, and that finds its power within, its slippery relationships with heteronormative standards of gender, beauty and womanhood.
Sodipo, who is trans herself, is offering up a beautiful, tender and funny portrait of a Black trans-femme identity, which is also fluid and shifting. A note in the exhibition text states: ‘Ebun Sodipo makes work for those who will come after: the Black trans people of the future. Her interdisciplinary practice narrates her construction of a Black trans-feminine self after slavery and colonialism.’ This is a powerful mission with strong moral intention. It is made more poignant by underlining the fact that archives have the potential to slip between the deeply personal and the collective: the material Sodipo has collected evokes very private feelings whilst offering infinite points of connection and collective experience. Identity, offered here, also shifts between the singular and shared. Sodipo’s mastery of her material is a confident exploration of transness, which feels necessary in the current socio-political climate – as one image proudly states: ‘I am a woman. I feel great.’
Fluidity and fluctuation are central to the exhibition: water is a repeating motif throughout the video and the floor between the screen and the seating area is covered in reflective PVC, creating blurry, rippling reflections of the montage as it plays. This is mirrored in the silvery mylar backing which forms the base to all the collage works. Everything is in motion and rippling with potential meaning. It is this sense of fluidity that is the most emphatic common theme; all that may often be understood as solid or defined – desire, identity, history - is in fact the opposite. Sodipo’s exploration of these big ideas is moving and effectively conveyed.
Ebun Sodipo’s work has recently been given some impressive, and well-deserved, platforms: from performing at Frieze Live in 2021 to her first institutional solo exhibition at the Goldsmiths CCA which closed in February. She has also held residencies at Gasworks, Porthmeor Studios and Rhubaba Gallery, and Nasty Girl (Sharpest Girl in Town) was developed during her residency at VO Curations in 2022. The exhibition is a continuation of an experimental collection of works across live performance and writing - ‘my body reminds us of water’ (2020-) explores notions of embodied and ancestral knowledge in relation to black transness and the visual phenomenon of water moving, shifting and rippling light. Sodipo shows great promise in being an artist exploring an identity that is still radical and widely oppressed. Her practice will surely continue to be given even bigger and brighter stages.
Ebun Sodipo: Nasty Girl (The Sharpest Girl in Town) is showing at V.O. Curations until 5th April 2023.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
A suited white man sits across from a glammed-up black woman, in some brightly lit outdoor dining-area, and tells her in monotone that she has beautiful eyes, beautiful lips, beautiful hair and beautiful style before saying ‘Tell me your deepest, darkest secret’. The woman – “Rachel, from Detroit” – hesitates, searching. It’s a clip from some reality TV show and is one of the many fragments of video that make up Ebun Sodipo’s Nasty Girl (Sharpest Girl in Town): the centrepiece to Sodipo’s exhibition of the same name at VO Curations. Nasty Girl is a 24-minute-long looping montage: a constantly shifting digital collage, in which clips play and re-play, pause, overlap and synchronise. At first the selection of material appears random: a vogueing Santa Claus; a seal bobbing up through an ice hole; a burning wind-turbine. However common themes soon appear: scenes of nature, references to Black culture and history, images of sexuality and desire, portrayals of femininity, and a strong through-line of humour. The other nine works in the show are all collages, appearing like stills from the video, comprised of images along the same themes and mounted onto reflective, shimmering mylar.
All the images and video clips are found material, sourced from the internet, and Sodipo’s selection and stitching together of them is considered and subtle, with a lasting and unravelling impact. The use of video montage, with clips played, stopped, and re-played, evokes the personalised flow of images of someone’s Instagram feed or Youtube ‘Suggested’ sidebar: the heady, often overwhelming, universe of visual material we are exposed to online which, through algorithms and our own online behaviour, is sifted through to become a very personal library. In this sense, Sodipo’s collection of stills and clips becomes a glimpse into a personal archive, and in turn a reflection of an identity. The subject matter and style of found imagery is broad, from reality TV to nature documentary and home-video but is woven together with these common themes to create a sense of wholeness. Sodipo’s video presents a strong command of collage as a medium, tool, aesthetic, and means of understanding.
The collage pieces are slightly less emphatic in their impact: a lot of the images are quite dark, and they are all glossed with resin, making them harder to identify – made even harder by the lighting in the first exhibition space. They have a distinctly hand-made quality – the textures are very tactile, and they appear to have warped in the glossing process. Although this creates a sense that they are unfinished, like preparatory sketches for the video, it also offers a welcome contrast to the digital two-dimensional presentation of Nasty Girl. The collages also allow for longer meditation on some of the material, particularly the included text quotations, bold and reading like slogans. Again, Sodipo’s curation of material has an intriguing power infused with the very personal: the collages feel like sheets out of a scrapbook, pages from an encyclopaedia of an identity. As one text quotation states - in a camp note of self-congratulation - these pieces example: ‘the art of autobiography’.
Desire is present here in all its forms: there is lust for another body – sculpted abs contorting under a shower; romantic desire; feelings of being desired; desires for success and fame – a woman in a grainy home-video tells the camera: ‘I already am somebody…I just wanna be a rich somebody’; hope and desire for political change– the legendary Marsha P. Johnson demanding gay rights. There are even feelings of wonder akin to desire – a hand caresses the leaf of a giant aloe vera plant; the recurring images of natural phenomena evoke a sensation of awe. Desire is presented as multi-faceted, experienced inwardly and towards others, potent and wondrous.
The material coalesces around Black and queer subjectivities. Black history and culture are present throughout, from footage of MP Diane Abbott winning her first election in 1987, to images of Theaster Gates’ ‘Black Chapel’ Serpentine pavilion in 2022 and the soaring voice of Leontyne Price – the first African American soprano to receive international acclaim. There are images of Megan Thee Stallion, Whitney, Aretha Franklin and numerous shots of Naomi Campbell. The viral video of a young black woman twerking on a white man before he falls back onto the floor from 2017, is included alongside footage of black women dancing in corridors, their bedrooms and public spaces. Black identity is presented as being far from monolithic or constructed within institutions and systems of power: it is joyous, deeply personal, and also profoundly collective.
Similarly, there are rich, continuous references to queer sensibilities, varying from the explicit – two men kissing – to the implied – the viral video of gay-icon Mariah Carey’s response to the ‘bottle cap’ challenge. The works are infused with a sense of camp: the repeated juxtaposition of scenes of destruction or danger (such as a burning wind turbine) and those of humour or beauty evoke a strong feeling of affectation and irony. The clips of nature’s phenomena – such as a floating pink jellyfish - become illustrations of the monstrously queer. A trans-femme subjectivity is implicit through the depictions of glamour, femininity, longing and the wondrous: an identity forged through, and that finds its power within, its slippery relationships with heteronormative standards of gender, beauty and womanhood.
Sodipo, who is trans herself, is offering up a beautiful, tender and funny portrait of a Black trans-femme identity, which is also fluid and shifting. A note in the exhibition text states: ‘Ebun Sodipo makes work for those who will come after: the Black trans people of the future. Her interdisciplinary practice narrates her construction of a Black trans-feminine self after slavery and colonialism.’ This is a powerful mission with strong moral intention. It is made more poignant by underlining the fact that archives have the potential to slip between the deeply personal and the collective: the material Sodipo has collected evokes very private feelings whilst offering infinite points of connection and collective experience. Identity, offered here, also shifts between the singular and shared. Sodipo’s mastery of her material is a confident exploration of transness, which feels necessary in the current socio-political climate – as one image proudly states: ‘I am a woman. I feel great.’
Fluidity and fluctuation are central to the exhibition: water is a repeating motif throughout the video and the floor between the screen and the seating area is covered in reflective PVC, creating blurry, rippling reflections of the montage as it plays. This is mirrored in the silvery mylar backing which forms the base to all the collage works. Everything is in motion and rippling with potential meaning. It is this sense of fluidity that is the most emphatic common theme; all that may often be understood as solid or defined – desire, identity, history - is in fact the opposite. Sodipo’s exploration of these big ideas is moving and effectively conveyed.
Ebun Sodipo’s work has recently been given some impressive, and well-deserved, platforms: from performing at Frieze Live in 2021 to her first institutional solo exhibition at the Goldsmiths CCA which closed in February. She has also held residencies at Gasworks, Porthmeor Studios and Rhubaba Gallery, and Nasty Girl (Sharpest Girl in Town) was developed during her residency at VO Curations in 2022. The exhibition is a continuation of an experimental collection of works across live performance and writing - ‘my body reminds us of water’ (2020-) explores notions of embodied and ancestral knowledge in relation to black transness and the visual phenomenon of water moving, shifting and rippling light. Sodipo shows great promise in being an artist exploring an identity that is still radical and widely oppressed. Her practice will surely continue to be given even bigger and brighter stages.
Ebun Sodipo: Nasty Girl (The Sharpest Girl in Town) is showing at V.O. Curations until 5th April 2023.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
A suited white man sits across from a glammed-up black woman, in some brightly lit outdoor dining-area, and tells her in monotone that she has beautiful eyes, beautiful lips, beautiful hair and beautiful style before saying ‘Tell me your deepest, darkest secret’. The woman – “Rachel, from Detroit” – hesitates, searching. It’s a clip from some reality TV show and is one of the many fragments of video that make up Ebun Sodipo’s Nasty Girl (Sharpest Girl in Town): the centrepiece to Sodipo’s exhibition of the same name at VO Curations. Nasty Girl is a 24-minute-long looping montage: a constantly shifting digital collage, in which clips play and re-play, pause, overlap and synchronise. At first the selection of material appears random: a vogueing Santa Claus; a seal bobbing up through an ice hole; a burning wind-turbine. However common themes soon appear: scenes of nature, references to Black culture and history, images of sexuality and desire, portrayals of femininity, and a strong through-line of humour. The other nine works in the show are all collages, appearing like stills from the video, comprised of images along the same themes and mounted onto reflective, shimmering mylar.
All the images and video clips are found material, sourced from the internet, and Sodipo’s selection and stitching together of them is considered and subtle, with a lasting and unravelling impact. The use of video montage, with clips played, stopped, and re-played, evokes the personalised flow of images of someone’s Instagram feed or Youtube ‘Suggested’ sidebar: the heady, often overwhelming, universe of visual material we are exposed to online which, through algorithms and our own online behaviour, is sifted through to become a very personal library. In this sense, Sodipo’s collection of stills and clips becomes a glimpse into a personal archive, and in turn a reflection of an identity. The subject matter and style of found imagery is broad, from reality TV to nature documentary and home-video but is woven together with these common themes to create a sense of wholeness. Sodipo’s video presents a strong command of collage as a medium, tool, aesthetic, and means of understanding.
The collage pieces are slightly less emphatic in their impact: a lot of the images are quite dark, and they are all glossed with resin, making them harder to identify – made even harder by the lighting in the first exhibition space. They have a distinctly hand-made quality – the textures are very tactile, and they appear to have warped in the glossing process. Although this creates a sense that they are unfinished, like preparatory sketches for the video, it also offers a welcome contrast to the digital two-dimensional presentation of Nasty Girl. The collages also allow for longer meditation on some of the material, particularly the included text quotations, bold and reading like slogans. Again, Sodipo’s curation of material has an intriguing power infused with the very personal: the collages feel like sheets out of a scrapbook, pages from an encyclopaedia of an identity. As one text quotation states - in a camp note of self-congratulation - these pieces example: ‘the art of autobiography’.
Desire is present here in all its forms: there is lust for another body – sculpted abs contorting under a shower; romantic desire; feelings of being desired; desires for success and fame – a woman in a grainy home-video tells the camera: ‘I already am somebody…I just wanna be a rich somebody’; hope and desire for political change– the legendary Marsha P. Johnson demanding gay rights. There are even feelings of wonder akin to desire – a hand caresses the leaf of a giant aloe vera plant; the recurring images of natural phenomena evoke a sensation of awe. Desire is presented as multi-faceted, experienced inwardly and towards others, potent and wondrous.
The material coalesces around Black and queer subjectivities. Black history and culture are present throughout, from footage of MP Diane Abbott winning her first election in 1987, to images of Theaster Gates’ ‘Black Chapel’ Serpentine pavilion in 2022 and the soaring voice of Leontyne Price – the first African American soprano to receive international acclaim. There are images of Megan Thee Stallion, Whitney, Aretha Franklin and numerous shots of Naomi Campbell. The viral video of a young black woman twerking on a white man before he falls back onto the floor from 2017, is included alongside footage of black women dancing in corridors, their bedrooms and public spaces. Black identity is presented as being far from monolithic or constructed within institutions and systems of power: it is joyous, deeply personal, and also profoundly collective.
Similarly, there are rich, continuous references to queer sensibilities, varying from the explicit – two men kissing – to the implied – the viral video of gay-icon Mariah Carey’s response to the ‘bottle cap’ challenge. The works are infused with a sense of camp: the repeated juxtaposition of scenes of destruction or danger (such as a burning wind turbine) and those of humour or beauty evoke a strong feeling of affectation and irony. The clips of nature’s phenomena – such as a floating pink jellyfish - become illustrations of the monstrously queer. A trans-femme subjectivity is implicit through the depictions of glamour, femininity, longing and the wondrous: an identity forged through, and that finds its power within, its slippery relationships with heteronormative standards of gender, beauty and womanhood.
Sodipo, who is trans herself, is offering up a beautiful, tender and funny portrait of a Black trans-femme identity, which is also fluid and shifting. A note in the exhibition text states: ‘Ebun Sodipo makes work for those who will come after: the Black trans people of the future. Her interdisciplinary practice narrates her construction of a Black trans-feminine self after slavery and colonialism.’ This is a powerful mission with strong moral intention. It is made more poignant by underlining the fact that archives have the potential to slip between the deeply personal and the collective: the material Sodipo has collected evokes very private feelings whilst offering infinite points of connection and collective experience. Identity, offered here, also shifts between the singular and shared. Sodipo’s mastery of her material is a confident exploration of transness, which feels necessary in the current socio-political climate – as one image proudly states: ‘I am a woman. I feel great.’
Fluidity and fluctuation are central to the exhibition: water is a repeating motif throughout the video and the floor between the screen and the seating area is covered in reflective PVC, creating blurry, rippling reflections of the montage as it plays. This is mirrored in the silvery mylar backing which forms the base to all the collage works. Everything is in motion and rippling with potential meaning. It is this sense of fluidity that is the most emphatic common theme; all that may often be understood as solid or defined – desire, identity, history - is in fact the opposite. Sodipo’s exploration of these big ideas is moving and effectively conveyed.
Ebun Sodipo’s work has recently been given some impressive, and well-deserved, platforms: from performing at Frieze Live in 2021 to her first institutional solo exhibition at the Goldsmiths CCA which closed in February. She has also held residencies at Gasworks, Porthmeor Studios and Rhubaba Gallery, and Nasty Girl (Sharpest Girl in Town) was developed during her residency at VO Curations in 2022. The exhibition is a continuation of an experimental collection of works across live performance and writing - ‘my body reminds us of water’ (2020-) explores notions of embodied and ancestral knowledge in relation to black transness and the visual phenomenon of water moving, shifting and rippling light. Sodipo shows great promise in being an artist exploring an identity that is still radical and widely oppressed. Her practice will surely continue to be given even bigger and brighter stages.
Ebun Sodipo: Nasty Girl (The Sharpest Girl in Town) is showing at V.O. Curations until 5th April 2023.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
A suited white man sits across from a glammed-up black woman, in some brightly lit outdoor dining-area, and tells her in monotone that she has beautiful eyes, beautiful lips, beautiful hair and beautiful style before saying ‘Tell me your deepest, darkest secret’. The woman – “Rachel, from Detroit” – hesitates, searching. It’s a clip from some reality TV show and is one of the many fragments of video that make up Ebun Sodipo’s Nasty Girl (Sharpest Girl in Town): the centrepiece to Sodipo’s exhibition of the same name at VO Curations. Nasty Girl is a 24-minute-long looping montage: a constantly shifting digital collage, in which clips play and re-play, pause, overlap and synchronise. At first the selection of material appears random: a vogueing Santa Claus; a seal bobbing up through an ice hole; a burning wind-turbine. However common themes soon appear: scenes of nature, references to Black culture and history, images of sexuality and desire, portrayals of femininity, and a strong through-line of humour. The other nine works in the show are all collages, appearing like stills from the video, comprised of images along the same themes and mounted onto reflective, shimmering mylar.
All the images and video clips are found material, sourced from the internet, and Sodipo’s selection and stitching together of them is considered and subtle, with a lasting and unravelling impact. The use of video montage, with clips played, stopped, and re-played, evokes the personalised flow of images of someone’s Instagram feed or Youtube ‘Suggested’ sidebar: the heady, often overwhelming, universe of visual material we are exposed to online which, through algorithms and our own online behaviour, is sifted through to become a very personal library. In this sense, Sodipo’s collection of stills and clips becomes a glimpse into a personal archive, and in turn a reflection of an identity. The subject matter and style of found imagery is broad, from reality TV to nature documentary and home-video but is woven together with these common themes to create a sense of wholeness. Sodipo’s video presents a strong command of collage as a medium, tool, aesthetic, and means of understanding.
The collage pieces are slightly less emphatic in their impact: a lot of the images are quite dark, and they are all glossed with resin, making them harder to identify – made even harder by the lighting in the first exhibition space. They have a distinctly hand-made quality – the textures are very tactile, and they appear to have warped in the glossing process. Although this creates a sense that they are unfinished, like preparatory sketches for the video, it also offers a welcome contrast to the digital two-dimensional presentation of Nasty Girl. The collages also allow for longer meditation on some of the material, particularly the included text quotations, bold and reading like slogans. Again, Sodipo’s curation of material has an intriguing power infused with the very personal: the collages feel like sheets out of a scrapbook, pages from an encyclopaedia of an identity. As one text quotation states - in a camp note of self-congratulation - these pieces example: ‘the art of autobiography’.
Desire is present here in all its forms: there is lust for another body – sculpted abs contorting under a shower; romantic desire; feelings of being desired; desires for success and fame – a woman in a grainy home-video tells the camera: ‘I already am somebody…I just wanna be a rich somebody’; hope and desire for political change– the legendary Marsha P. Johnson demanding gay rights. There are even feelings of wonder akin to desire – a hand caresses the leaf of a giant aloe vera plant; the recurring images of natural phenomena evoke a sensation of awe. Desire is presented as multi-faceted, experienced inwardly and towards others, potent and wondrous.
The material coalesces around Black and queer subjectivities. Black history and culture are present throughout, from footage of MP Diane Abbott winning her first election in 1987, to images of Theaster Gates’ ‘Black Chapel’ Serpentine pavilion in 2022 and the soaring voice of Leontyne Price – the first African American soprano to receive international acclaim. There are images of Megan Thee Stallion, Whitney, Aretha Franklin and numerous shots of Naomi Campbell. The viral video of a young black woman twerking on a white man before he falls back onto the floor from 2017, is included alongside footage of black women dancing in corridors, their bedrooms and public spaces. Black identity is presented as being far from monolithic or constructed within institutions and systems of power: it is joyous, deeply personal, and also profoundly collective.
Similarly, there are rich, continuous references to queer sensibilities, varying from the explicit – two men kissing – to the implied – the viral video of gay-icon Mariah Carey’s response to the ‘bottle cap’ challenge. The works are infused with a sense of camp: the repeated juxtaposition of scenes of destruction or danger (such as a burning wind turbine) and those of humour or beauty evoke a strong feeling of affectation and irony. The clips of nature’s phenomena – such as a floating pink jellyfish - become illustrations of the monstrously queer. A trans-femme subjectivity is implicit through the depictions of glamour, femininity, longing and the wondrous: an identity forged through, and that finds its power within, its slippery relationships with heteronormative standards of gender, beauty and womanhood.
Sodipo, who is trans herself, is offering up a beautiful, tender and funny portrait of a Black trans-femme identity, which is also fluid and shifting. A note in the exhibition text states: ‘Ebun Sodipo makes work for those who will come after: the Black trans people of the future. Her interdisciplinary practice narrates her construction of a Black trans-feminine self after slavery and colonialism.’ This is a powerful mission with strong moral intention. It is made more poignant by underlining the fact that archives have the potential to slip between the deeply personal and the collective: the material Sodipo has collected evokes very private feelings whilst offering infinite points of connection and collective experience. Identity, offered here, also shifts between the singular and shared. Sodipo’s mastery of her material is a confident exploration of transness, which feels necessary in the current socio-political climate – as one image proudly states: ‘I am a woman. I feel great.’
Fluidity and fluctuation are central to the exhibition: water is a repeating motif throughout the video and the floor between the screen and the seating area is covered in reflective PVC, creating blurry, rippling reflections of the montage as it plays. This is mirrored in the silvery mylar backing which forms the base to all the collage works. Everything is in motion and rippling with potential meaning. It is this sense of fluidity that is the most emphatic common theme; all that may often be understood as solid or defined – desire, identity, history - is in fact the opposite. Sodipo’s exploration of these big ideas is moving and effectively conveyed.
Ebun Sodipo’s work has recently been given some impressive, and well-deserved, platforms: from performing at Frieze Live in 2021 to her first institutional solo exhibition at the Goldsmiths CCA which closed in February. She has also held residencies at Gasworks, Porthmeor Studios and Rhubaba Gallery, and Nasty Girl (Sharpest Girl in Town) was developed during her residency at VO Curations in 2022. The exhibition is a continuation of an experimental collection of works across live performance and writing - ‘my body reminds us of water’ (2020-) explores notions of embodied and ancestral knowledge in relation to black transness and the visual phenomenon of water moving, shifting and rippling light. Sodipo shows great promise in being an artist exploring an identity that is still radical and widely oppressed. Her practice will surely continue to be given even bigger and brighter stages.
Ebun Sodipo: Nasty Girl (The Sharpest Girl in Town) is showing at V.O. Curations until 5th April 2023.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
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