LOT 6 Valerie Amani

Description

VALERIE ASIIMWE AMANI – Tanzania 1991

Valerie Asiimwe Amani is a Tanzanian artist, curator and writer whose multidisciplinary explorations of artistic mediums, interrogates the daily translation of body erotics, language, place and memory.

Exhibitions include The Main Complaint, at the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary African Art, Cape Town; Terrains of Possibility at Rele Gallery, Lagos and Boda Boda Lounge at City SALTS, Basel.

She has given various talks on Art and Activism including SOAS, University of London with The Royal African society. She is also an art writer focusing on emerging African artists, on Emergent Art Space.

Amani is an Economics and Fashion graduate, and recently acquired her MFA at The Ruskin School of Art, Oxford University. She is the recipient of the 2021 Vivien Leigh Prize for a work on paper, which led to the acquisition of the piece by The Ashmolean Museum.

The work forms part of a larger body of work, A Confluence of Parts that contains artworks founded on specific life intersections of three characters, and their deep desire to let go of their physical pain. I use my body to tell their stories, and this work is an is an attempt to transcend the way they were remembered Reflect on the burdens many women’s bodies have had to endure; the societal trauma from being barren, remain in a toxic relationship or sacrifice ones own health for the sake of others. The Three bodies are a reincarnation, as the beginning of an attempt to restore joy to a site that previously experienced abrasion.