who all elsewhere
who all elsewhere is a thread of loose thoughts, audio files, and featured visual art practices organized by Zakkiyyah Najeebah Dumas-O’Neal for Ateliers Médicis’ online exhibition space, the Other·expo. who all elsewhere brings together a diverse range of black artist practices and voices that are held across time, space, and geography.
who all elsewhere is an open invitation to explore unlimited potentials and new frameworks actualized by contemporary artists that reach spaces beyond the imposed political obligations that are typically forced upon Black artists. This invitation is one of arrival, into abstraction, emotional states of being, ecstasy, metaphysical departures, grief, poetics, translation and evolving states of the imaginary.
Over the course of the pandemic I had several interactions with Black artists regarding their response, or absence of response to the pandemic, how they’ve readjusted their place or being in the world, and where the source of their imagination and dreams depart from. I’m interested in the connections and intersections between a Black artistic consciousness not contained by the external gaze, but rather one that is more informed by the internal. How are we navigating through similar modes of inquiry, by way of varying methods? What are the common threads amongst our dreaming practices? What does it mean for the Black artist to conceptualize and visualize their interior thoughts? How might “elsewhere” encourage us to be less contained and more expansive?
— Zakkiyyah Najeebah Dumas-O'Neal
→ The piece will soon be available, stay tuned!
who all elsewhere is part of a partnership between Étant donnés and the Ford Foundation to promote the African-American art scene in France. Étant donnés Contemporary Art is a program of the French American Cultural Exchange (FACE) Foundation, developed in partnership with the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States, with the support of Institut Français-Paris, the French Ministry of Culture, the Ford Foundation, the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, and the ADAGP.