transfeminisms Chapter III:
Fragile Archives
5 July – 17 August 2024
Open Wednesday – Saturday, 12–6pm
Mimosa House presents the third chapter of transfeminisms, a major survey touring exhibition, that brings to light a multiplicity of urgent, pressing and ongoing issues faced by women, queer and trans people across the globe. The third chapter (5 July – 17 August 2024) will feature works by Victoria Cantons, Elsa James, Yuki Kihara, Myriam Omar Awadi, Irene Antonia Diane Reece and Agnes Questionmark.
Fragile Archives explores the survival of histories and narratives in non-institutional archives or embodied forms and practices. These range from personal, family, or community archives to painting, photography, written text, voice, and performance. The artists in this chapter investigate the origins and transformation of self and methods of archiving, challenging dominant and singular historical narratives and common assumptions about gender and identity.
Unfolding over five chapters, transfeminisms outlines strategies of resistance through propositions of collective action, care and radical imagination, in order to generate a more equitable future. The exhibition explores the lineage of feminist art practices by facilitating dialogue between emerging and more established artists.
The title transfeminisms is deliberately provocative. The prefix “trans” implies ‘across, beyond, through, on the other side of’; while the ‘s’ in ‘feminisms’ recognises the innumerable definitions of feminism worldwide. Our intention is for transfeminisms to be understood within an inclusive and decolonial context – one that takes us across feminisms and encompasses various ‘trans’ possibilities, such as: transcultural, transcontinental, transgender, transformative, transgressive, transitory, translucent, transparent, transaction, translation, transfusion, transmission, transmutation.
Curators
Christine Eyene, Daria Khan, Jennifer McCabe and Maura Reilly
Assistant curators
Sandra Lam and Keshia Turley
Global Curatorial Advisors
Camille Auer, Giulia Casalini, Natasha Ginwala, Snejana Krasteva, Natalia Sielewicz, Gabriela Rangel, Lucía Sanromán, Olia Sosnovskaya, Stefanie Hessler, and Indira Ziyabek
transfeminisms is supported by
Lubaina Himid Projects
transfeminisms exhibition circle
Marcelle Joseph
Muriel Salem
Nayrouz Tatanaki
Mimosa House is supported by
Mimosa House patrons
About the Artists:
Victoria Cantons (b. 1969, Great Britain)
Victoria Cantons, born and based in London, completed her MFA at Slade School of Fine Art in 2021. Cantons was the only child to immigrant parents in a multi-cultural and religious home – her mother from Madrid and Catholic, her father French Algerian born to Jewish and Basque parents. Drawing on sources including poetry, Renaissance art, and film and music, exploring the human condition is at the core of Cantons’s work. She has a multidisciplinary practice that takes in painting, neon, text, performance, photography and video, working through a filter of thinking about presence and absence, language, the elegiac and the memento mori, connecting and disconnecting psychological boundaries in the relationships we have with ourselves and others.
Notable projects include curating Slade Masters Fine Art graduates in “London Grads Now” (2020 and 2021) at the Saatchi Gallery, London. Recent solo exhibitions include Kunstverein [Art Association] Dresden (2023); Guts Gallery, London (2023); Flowers Gallery, London (2023 and 2022). Recent group exhibitions include Drawing Room, London (2024); Hauser & Wirth, Somerset (2024); Wellcome Collection, London (2023) and The Atkinson Museum, Southport (2023).
Elsa James (b. 1968, London, England)
Elsa James is an artist and activist who lives and works in Essex. As a Black British woman, James's practice is driven by a profound yearning to dig deep into, and engage with, her Caribbean and African heritage. She works across live performance, film, printmaking, spoken word, neon and sound to create artworks invested in an ongoing questioning of visibility and belonging that centres Blackness as a methodology for liberation.
Recent solo exhibitions and performances include the National Maritime Museum, London (2024); Museum of London Docklands, London (2023); Tate Britain, London (2023); and Focal Point Gallery, Southend-on-Sea (2022). Her work is also included in group exhibitions at Copperfield, London (2024); The Art Museum at the University of Toronto, Canada (2024); a major Hayward Gallery Touring exhibition (2024-25); and Gagosian, London (2023).
Her work is held in public collections, including the UK Government Art Collection and Beecroft Art Gallery, where she became the first Black British artist to be acquired for the gallery's collection.
Yuki Kihara (b. 1975, Apia, Sāmoa)
Yuki Kihara - Aotearoa New Zealand’s 2022 Venice Biennale representative - is an interdisciplinary artist of Japanese and Sāmoan descent whose research-based approach seeks to challenge the dominant and singular historical narratives and their persistence in the socio-political climate; while often referencing the language of cultural traditions in her native land through a wide range of mediums, including performance, sculpture, video, photography, and curatorial practice.
Kihara's work can be found in permanent collections, among others, including the Museum of Modern Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; British Museum; Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art and the Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand. Kihara’s works have been presented in numerous exhibitions, including the Gwangju Biennale (2023); Aotearoa New Zealand Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale (2022); Aichi Triennale (2022); Bangkok Art Biennale (2018); Honolulu Biennale (2017); Asia Pacific Triennial (2015 and 2002); Sakahàn Quinquennial (2013) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (solo exhibition, 2008) to name a few.
Myriam Omar Awadi (b. 1983, Paris, France)
Myriam Omar Awadi is a French-Comorian artist living and working in Reunion Island.
She practises across drawing, embroidery, installation, sound art and performance. Her mixed media works use wood, clay, glass, textile, sequin, sea water, and more to form installations activated by her own voice or that of the public. Her feminist practice seeks to provide a platform to silenced voices and create listening spaces. Her recent research focuses on singing traditions that inscribe forgotten women’s presences and narratives, and other forms of feminist approaches used to challenge patriarchy.
Her work has been presented in numerous exhibitions including Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Kochi (2023); Zeitz Mocaa, Cape Town (2022); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2021); Musée des Arts Décoratifs de l’Océan Indien, Saint-Denis, Reunion Island, (2021); Bamako Encounters - African Biennale of Photography, Bamako (2019).
Irene Antonia Diane Reece (born,1993, Houston, Texas)
Irene Antonia Diane Reece is an artist and visual activist. Her subject matters include the Black archives, African diaspora, social injustice, family histories, re-memory, and mental and community health. Her practice engages the camera by being critical of its usage, to decentralise whiteness, engage/deconstruct the violence of the camera, protect Black archives, and centralise the complexities of the Black identities.
Previous shows include a solo exhibition at Project Row House, Houston (2023), and group exhibitions at Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (2023); Centre Culturel Les Étoiles de Jamaa El Fna, Marrakech (2023); Manifold DELUXE, Frieze No.9 Cork Street, London (2022); Dak’Art – Biennale of Contemporary African Art, Dakar (2022).
Her work has been featured in the New York Times, Vogue, Art Papers, FOAM Magazine.
Agnes Questionmark (b. 1995, Rome, Italy)
Agnes Questionmark is an artist who works across performance, sculpture, video, and installation. Among her recent performances are CHM13hTERT (2023), presented at a public railway station at SpazioSERRA in Milan, and TRANSGENESIS (2021), presented by The Orange Garden and Harlesden High Street in London. Her work has been exhibited at the 60th Venice Biennale curated by Adriano Pedrosa; the Centre d'Art Contemporain, Geneva; the MAXXI Museum, Rome; the Malta Biennale, Valletta; König Galerie, Berlin; and the 14th Gwangju Biennale. Her writings have been published by NERO Edition, with whom she recently published her first book “QuestionGen(0.00022ml)” presented at the ICA in Milan. Questionmark is currently working on a project for Gratin Gallery in New York while pursuing a master's degree at the Pratt Institute.