Sokari Douglas Camp
dal 27/10/2010 al 17/12/2010
Segnalato da
27/10/2010
Sokari Douglas Camp
Stefan Stux Gallery, New York
The artist works in steel to create sculptures that tell very personal stories. In her hands, the hard steel takes surprising forms that inspire, challenge and beguile both the heart and the mind.
STUX Gallery, New York, with Independent Curator/Scholar Kunbi Oni, a specialist in Contemporary
African Art who has taught in New York, lectured in London and at the MoMA on Contemporary
African Art, is pleased to present an exhibition of sculptures by Sokari Douglas Camp. Sokari is a
prominent sculptor whose work, NO-O-WAR-R NO-O-WAR-R, was short-listed for London’s Trafalgar
Square Fourth Plinth in 2003. Sokari’s current major public commission, All the World is Now Richer,
for Burgess Park, London is to mark the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade.
Sokari Douglas Camp works in steel to create sculptures that tell very personal stories. In her
hands, the hard steel takes surprising forms that inspire, challenge and beguile both the heart and the
mind. Sokari’s birthplace, Buguma, is in the Niger Delta on the southeastern coast of Nigeria, where
today foreign oil companies drill for most of the country's petroleum exports, thereby causing a
fractious relationship between the local population of the region and the oil companies. Buguma is
also the cultural capital of the Kalabari, Sokari's ethnicity – a people known for their traditions of
masquerade/performances led by troupes of young men in masks and costumes that represent the
mythological beings known locally as water spirits.
Filtered through this African background, an international education and a cosmopolitan life, Sokari
Douglas Camp's objects embody narratives of the socio-political (such as Living Memorial, 2006),
social (Plastic Bag Series, 2009), philosophical/existential (Teasing Suicide, 2004), psychological
(Freud - White Sacrifice, 1998), and mythical (Alali Aru, 1986) to the more current political ones, such
as Relative (2010), Birds Extinct Birds (2010) and Underskirt Protest (2010). From life size sculptures
of six feet tall and much larger to intimate works of just 20 inches high, they all captivate and convince
of a world that is far away and so close at the same time.
Sokari Douglas Camp was born in Buguma, Nigeria. She currently lives and works in London. She
has won many awards including the very prestigious Commander of the Order of the British Empire
(CBE) in 2005 given in recognition of her outstanding achievements in the field of art and sculpture.
Her work has also been prominently featured in the collections of the British Museum, London, The
National Museum of African Art at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC and many other
public and private collections.
For further information please contact the gallery at Andrea Schnabl Andrea@stuxgallery.com.
Opening: 6 – 8 PM, Thursday, October 28, 2010
Stefan Stux Gallery
529 w 20 st., New York
Gallery hours: Tuesday - Saturday 11am - 6pm
Free admissions