NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING

2026 SOLO EXHIBITION

CURATED BY NATHALIE FRANKOWSKI

These works investigate how space, art, and the human body intersect as sites of oppression, resistance, and recovery. The project centers the lived experience of the oppressed subject, those whose bodies moved through, inhabited, and were constrained by colonial architectures and imposed spatial orders, while revealing how Indigenous African art and architecture sustained identity and dignity under colonial administration.

Through historical inquiry and visual practice, the work traces precolonial spatial traditions that foregrounded community, ritual, and ecological balance, and contrasts them with colonial interventions that fragmented land, cities, and social life. These imposed structures are read not only as physical transformations but as systems that disciplined African bodies and erased Indigenouspresence. In response, African philosophies such as Ubuntu and Pan-Africanism emerge as frameworks of resistance that reassert collective humanity, memory, and belonging.

The accompanying paintings and collages integrate human figures, often abstracted, fragmented, or layered, within precolonial maps, stamps, symbols, and text. These figures embody the oppressed persona: silenced yet enduring, constrained yet resistant. Positioned within distorted cartographies and archival marks, the bodies reclaim space and agency, transforming colonial records into counter-narratives. Together, the research and artworks frame architecture and art as embodied acts of resistance and healing, where land, memory, and the human figure converge to imagine liberated African futures.

PAINTINGS