Dawit L. Petros: The Stranger’s Notebook (Prologue)
Tiwani Contemporary, London, United Kingdom
20 May 2016 – 25 Jun 2016
About:
In The Stranger’s Notebook (Prologue), Petros considers the complexity of migratory movements within Africa and questions the privileging of certain narratives of migration over others. The works selected for the exhibition indeed challenge the lack of a critical framework with which to conceptualize accounts of cross-border flows within the African continent. The pictorial elements, which oscillate between figuration and abstraction, combine the descriptive character of photography with theatrical possibilities of perfomative still life. The video and sound components gesture towards a more fractured aesthetic, anchored within multiple viewpoints. The result is the artist’s proposition for an aesthetic and political language that points to the potentiality of mobile practices while offering disquieting, liberating possibilities to articulate the relationship between self and place.(quote from Contemporary And, April 2016)
Dawit L. Petros is a visual artist born in Eritrea and based in New York City. His work explores the relationship between African histories and European modernism. His installations and photography works are based around extensive research and travels.
Recent exhibitions include the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (2014), the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (solo exhibition, 2014), the Durban Art Gallery, South Africa (2011) and the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. (2