Arit Emmanuela Etukudo's UK solo debut explores black women's bodies through multimedia installations

Nigerian-American artist Arit Emmanuela Etukudo presents her first UK solo exhibition at New Art Exchange in Nottingham, running through October 9. The show features two interconnected multimedia installations: 'The Things It Carried' (2021) and 'The Christening' (2019). Both works center on the representation of black women's bodies and draw from the artist's personal experiences. In the first installation, six digitally manipulated self-portraits hang suspended over black sand, depicting the artist with multiple limbs and heads in various emotional states. These images appear to float freely, unconstrained by physical laws, accompanied by a soundtrack of spoken word and sustained musical notes. The second installation presents a partially buried box containing miniature white clay face casts submerged in water, some dissolving while others remain intact. A video projection above recounts a near-drowning experience through text and voiceover, exploring themes of loss, salvation, and invisibility. Etukudo employs video, photography, text, sound, and performance across both works to construct what she describes as a 'stylised visual vocabulary of the female form.' The exhibition forms part of Remark, a new art writing platform developed by ArtReview in collaboration with BACKLIT specifically for the East Midlands region.