powerful new exhibit forces viewers to question their understanding of black women

Nigerian-born, Ottawa, Canada-based visual artist Kosi Nnebe’s new solo exhibition, SOMATIC SATIATION, is an ode to Black womanhood. But it is not just any ode, it is a transformative experience meant to challenge the viewer’s conceptions about what Black womanhood even means, inspiring a more freeing understanding less rooted in misogynoiristic prejudices.

“The exhibition explores the lived experience of the black woman, and mimics the phenomenon of semantic satiation whereby repetition causes a word or phrase to temporarily lose meaning for the listener,” Nnebe explains. The image of the Black woman is repeated over and over again, sometimes hidden and abstracted within the work, in an effort to to overwhelm the viewer with until they begin to question their understanding of Black womanhood and the biases attached to the site of it.

“This moment of questioning creates an interval—an interruption, or rather an opening—that allows for a new understanding of black womanhood; one that is intimate and expansive; intrinsic and radical,” Nnebe says.

SOMATIC SATIATION is up at Studio Sixty Six, a contemporary art gallery in Ottawa,Canada geared towards emerging artists, until October 14th. You can find out more here, and see pieces from the exhibit below!