Enam Gbewonyo | Nude Me/Under the Skin: Dark Stars

'Nude Me/Under the Skin: Dark Stars', ushers in a new chapter in Gbewonyo’s Nude Me series that begins to explore African spirituality and cosmology. Inspired by the written texts of the likes of Malidoma Patrice Some and Zulumathabo Zulu this series delves into ancient African belief systems.

As with the previous Nude Me iterations the body of work also emotes the personal with Gbewonyo’s maternal grandmother being a starting point. The artist imagines herself being able to traverse the physical plane and explore multitude realms. In the ancestral, she returns to her grandmother’s bosom, opening a channel to the long line of mothers. The work also explores the body’s relationship to, and within, the universe and space.

'Nude Me/ Under the Skin: Dark Stars' is an unlearning of arbitrary fixed ways of knowing and exploring a journey inward back to ancestral knowing.