The Armory Show 2016

Booth 546, 2016 Armory Focus: African Perspectives, 3-6 March 2016

Ato Malinda

Imagine an “outing”. Not an outing as a noun, but an outing as a verb. “Outing” as a colloquialism for the LGBT community. A verb that can both describe the notion of freedom and simultaneously describe a violation upon one’s freedom. Imagine being “outed”, or perhaps, coming out. But what does one come out into? If queerness is not a phenotype, then is coming out not a singular event, but instead a series of negotiations? Or is there in fact a queer aesthetic; does queer visibility? This exhibition by Ato Malinda, will discuss the conundrums of the intersectionality of lesbian, African, Diaspora and queer aesthetics. Through video work and photographic performance, presented within a complex black box, Malinda will invite the audience to experience her subjectivity with the help of designer and sculptor Eto Otitigbe. Malinda and Otitigbe have begun a collaboration series that works to incorporate architectural line and design into installations for performance and video work.

The works on show will be Malinda’s three video installations, On Fait Ensemble, Prison Sex II and “The moment that you act as a performer, you act also as the audience of the person in front of you”, as well as Malinda’s collaboration with New York photographer Daniel Jack Lyons as a twelve part photography series, entitled Representation.

Special thanks to:

The Armory Show, Contemporary&, Eto Otitigbe, The Mondriaan Foundation, Pascale Reverte and Peter Wheeler, Tahir Karmali, Olive Watson.