Prior to the talk we invite you for light refreshments from 6.30pm with the opportunity to view Boswell's first U.S. solo exhibition Take Me To The Lighthouse. We will also have her limited edition print available for sale and are proud to annouce that the print is now in the permanent collection of The Studio Museum in Harlem.
Phoebe Boswell's print is from a series that we produced in collaboration with curator Larry Ossei-Mensah. Entitled All That I Am the series explores the structure and complexities of cultural identity. The other artists inlcude Derrick Adams, Sanford Biggers and Kameelah Janan Rasheed. All four artists meticulously question edifice, language, narrative, and self image. Their nuanced modus operandi pushes the boundaries of the status quo by challenging the viewer to confront a variety of issues that impact daily life, from the construction of identity via the media to the malleability of race-related vocabulary.
Take Me To The Lighthouse, May 4 – June 10, is the first US solo exhibition of Kenyan-British artist Phoebe Boswell. Boswell's multimedia practice centers around a delicate diasporic consciousness of personal identity, collective memory, and what it means to belong. In a characteristically immersive and intimate presentation, this new body of work layers several aspects of Boswell's varied artistic vocabulary, including small-scale, large, and site-specific drawings, video, interactive installations, and spoken word. Her work is also being exhibited at the Sapar Contemporary booth at 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, New York, May 4-6.
Phoebe Boswell (b. 1982, Kenya) is a multimedia artist who lives and works in London. Born in Nairobi to a Kikuyu mother and British Kenyan father, and brought up in the Arabian Gulf, she combines traditional draftswomanship and digital technology to create layered works anchored to an inbetween state of diasporic consciousness. Boswell studied Painting at the Slade School of Art and 2D Animation at Central St Martins, London and her work has been exhibited with galleries including Carroll / Fletcher, Kristin Hjellegjerde, InIVA and Tiwani Contemporary and has screened at Sundance, the London Film Festival, LA Film Festival, Blackstar and CinemAfrica amongst others. She participated in the Gothenburg International Biennial of Contemporary Art 2015 and was commissioned to make new work for the Biennial of Moving Images 2016 at the Centre d'Art Contemporain in Geneva. Boswell was the first recipient of the Sky Academy Arts Scholarship, was awarded the Special Prize at the Future Generation Art Prize for her interactive installation Mutumia, which consequently showed as part of the 57th Venice Biennale, and has recently been made a Ford Foundation fellow. She is currently a Somerset House artist-in-residence in London.