Installation view of Hybrid Spirit, 2020, featuring Adejoke Tugbiyele, Work Wife (2019) (image courtesy the Melrose Gallery)
Adejoke Tugbiyele manifests a “hybrid spirit” in her work, creating soulful, resilient sculpture-costumes, some of which are now on view in her online exhibition via the Melrose Gallery in Johannesburg. Tugbiyele’s works reference the formal qualities of umchayelo — Zulu grass brooms. These brooms conjure associations with the labor of women, who both craft and use them for domestic work. Umchayelo also evokes the pan-African religious practice of cleansing evil spirits, which are sometimes associated with queerness. Tugbiyele, a queer African feminist, repurposes the brooms in service of her eclectic perspective, embracing queerness alongside Indigenous African religions without separation.
29 Oct 2020