Soft Opening is pleased to announce Nasty Girl 2 (The Beast), a solo exhibition of new work from London-based artist Ebun Sodipo, curated by Languid Hands. Opening from 5–8pm on Saturday 31st August with a conversation between Sodipo and curator Imani Mason Jordan, Nasty Girl 2 (The Beast) will comprise a new film work of the same title alongside three wall-based collages.
“These works come together as tableaux referencing myriad forms of black womanhood, the dangerous magic of black trans-femininity, the complicated nature of sexuality, gender euphoria, witchcraft, voice, gaze, tactility, surgery, adornment & beauty.”—Languid Hands
Using processes of research, excavation and storytelling, Sodipo seeks to subvert notions of race and gender as defined by history and its images. Through a practice that incorporates assemblage, sculpture, archiving, film, poetry and performance, Sodipo at once mines ancestral knowledge and visual culture to depict the Black transfeminine experience, interrogating where the record of this presence exists within the archive of Black experience more broadly.
In these new works, Sodipo utilises assemblage as a technique to realize the formation of both collective and personal narrative. Incorporating material from an extensive visual archive of found still and moving digital imagery sourced online into large-scale collages, the artist embodies, reconstructs and reinterprets both social and art history. In her compositions, Sodipo restores neglected figures from the past and by doing so, imagines and plots a trajectory for trans futures.