Valerie Ebuwa’s multi-layered project reclaiming the black female body. Part of Artist Archive.

ValUE is an ongoing and multi-layered project that challenges racism and ideas of ‘conventional’ beauty head on. The name comes from artist Valerie Uchechukwu Ebuwa’s initials, and also stands for the quality of the project’s content, in which she works to decode racial oppression through dance and visual art. Ebuwa’s work illustrates how the modern inability to contextualise black bodies in contemporary spaces has repeatedly occurred throughout history, and offers a better perspective on old contexts. It asks us to hold a higher regard for the black female.  

Ebuwa incorporates her own body in order to offer different perspectives on the black female image, which has largely been objectified, exotified and excluded from art history. This use of her body serves as a contribution to the demolition of contemporary hierarchy, patriarchy and racism, giving an all-round archetypal makeover by reversing subject-object interrelations between artist and model. Through illustrations, paintings, photographs and films in collaboration with other artists, ValUE exposes their perceptions and artistic interpretation of Ebuwa’s body and challenges the notion of ‘unfamiliarity’ of this subject.

This work explores the reclamation and ownership of primitivism, by allowing black women to curate and own their narratives – rather than settling on perceived notions and stereotypes of what the black female body is.

Events
Material Archive: ValUE – 9 Sep 2022 – 10 Feb 2023
In Conversation with ValUE – Fri 9 Sep 2022

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