Esmaa Mohamoud: Let Them Consume Me In The Light
Kavi Gupta | 219 N. Elizabeth St. Chicago, IL
Opening April 14th
“They should consume us in the light of the truth, in the light of racial injustice, in the light of the things we don’t usually want to talk about.”
–Esmaa Mohamoud
Kavi Gupta presents Let Them Consume Me In The Light, a solo exhibition of new works by internationally acclaimed conceptual artist Esmaa Mohamoud. The exhibition examines what Mohamoud calls “Black body politics”—a web of interconnected personal, social, economic, and historical factors that shape how Blackness is perceived by Black people and nonBlack people alike. The title alludes to the inevitability that Black cultural products and their creators will be exploited by majoritarian society. “They’re already gonna consume us, it might as well be out in the open,” Mohamoud says.
Four paradoxical sculptural phenomena fill the gallery: an elegant but inaccessibly tall peacock chair; a marvellous but un-drivable pink Cadillac; an enchanting but lifeless prairie of black steel dandelions; and the visages of three young African girls, tenderly carved from shea butter. The utilitarian functionality of Mohamoud’s uncanny creations has been obliterated, leaving only their artifice to behold…
Read the full press release here
Photo credit: Kavi Gupta Gallery. Installation view, Esmaa Mohamoud, Let Them Consume Me In The Light, 2023. Kavi Gupta | Elizabeth St. Fl 1.