Forum 92
Two contemporary international artists, Anthony Olubunmi Akinbola and Turiya Magadlela, pull together new works made from nylon pantyhose and durags. Their use of materials, in an array of complexion colors and patterns, results in multilayered artworks shaped by identity-making fashion choices. Durags and tights are commercially available, readymade objects that come into contact with a personās skin and hair, managing and manipulating physical features and character assumptions. While many athletic dress code policies ban the wearing of durags, hosiery is still closely associated with white-collar worker attire. These tight-fitting cloths increasingly became more affordable due to improved industrial manufacturing, attributing to their domestic and global affiliations with gender and class.
A constant if not consistent motif in the work of Akinbola and Magadlela continues to be the role of painting, its visual construction, where abstraction is reinterpreted in a different medium, a synthetic relative sold under countless brand names in mass fashion. Skin Tight stretches these conversations of innovation, identity, and everyday materials in new directions with breathtaking, artistic creations. Through Magadlelaās and Akinbolaās handling of a variety of flexible fabrics into abstract compositions, they craft unique and varying commentaries on the fetishization and control of Black and Brown bodiesāfrom head to toe.
Anthony Olubunmi Akinbola and Turiya Magadlela is organized by Alyssa Velazquez, assistant curator.
Part of → Forum Series
Forum Gallery presents the work of living artists in an ongoing series that invites them to expand their practice through a commission or new presentation of existing works. Initiated in 1990, and with 86 projects to date, the Forum series is an opportunity for artists to deepen their relationship to and understanding of the museum.
