Free Form: a celebration of Black womxnhood
curated by The Rogue Collection
featuring Nwaka Okparaeke, Nnenna Onuoha, Keleena Onyeaka, Sheila Chukwulozie, India Sky, CIL, Sola and Summer Pearl
Event on Fri 29th October 2021, 1 - 9pm
£5 tickets
Part of the 2021 programme Realities
The Rogue Collection in collaboration with arebyte Gallery is proud to present Free Form: An artistic exploration from a network of Black artists using technology and digital media to celebrate the distinct complexities of Black womxnhood in all its facets. Through live performance & exhibition, Free Form tears away at societal restraints to reveal the limitless Black Feminine reality.
Free Form promises a showcase of multiple art forms exploring themes of queerness, heritage, intergenerational relations, hair, skin, and body image, intimacy, love, sex, joy, masculinity as a part of womxnhood, resistance, and more.
Events programme
Artist Talks
Sheila Chukwulozie Wed 20th Oct 2021, 7 - 7:30pm and CIL Mon 25th Oct 2021, 6 - 6:30pm To view the talks, please follow arebyte and The Rogue Collection on Instagram. They will be broadcast on Instagram Live.
Exhibited Work
Fri 29th Oct 2021, 1 - 6:30pm (Unticketed - free) Nwaka Okparaeke - PLANTAIN = LOVE and A NEW ROOM (2 Films), Nnenna Onuoha - Wash Day (Film), Keleenna Onyeaka - Taboo Beauty (Photography), Sheila Chukwulozie - Temple (Film), India Sky - The Life Cycle of Rainbows (Film)
Live Performances
Fri 29th Oct 2021, 7 - 9pm Ticketed - £5, CIL - Soundscape Performance, Sola - Music, Summer Pearl - Music
Nwaka Okparaeke is a Nigerian and British Film director and Photographer. Passionate about sharing authentic stories from unique perspectives. She wants people to feel free when engaging with her work. When creating a concept she is naturally drawn to seeing how peace, serenity, love and freedom connects to every experience. Her dreamy, euphoric style has resulted in her creating film and photography for a variety of companies right across the industry.
Nnenna Onuoha is a Ghanaian-Nigerian researcher, filmmaker and artist based in Berlin, Germany. Her films and videos centre Afrodiasporic voices to explore monumental silences surrounding the histories and afterlives of colonialism across West Africa, Europe and the US, asking: how do we remember, which pasts do we choose to perform and why? The second strand of her work focuses on archiving Black experience in the present to chronicle how, amidst all this, we practice care and repair for ourselves and each other. Nnenna is currently a doctoral researcher in Anthropology with Critical Media Practice at Harvard University and Global History at Potsdam University.
Keleenna Onyeaka is a versatile photographer who works through street and portraiture photography to simplify his view of the complicated. His street photography work strives to pull out the missed subtleties of everyday life, while his conceptual portraiture work tackles invisible subject matters such as culture, emotion and history. Keleenna has released several solo projects and has also worked for Notting Hill Carnival, London Fashion Week, Africa London Fashion week and Afronation.
Sheila Chukwulozie is a performance artist, an actor, a writer, a model and a tea maker. Her work is her way of combining memory and theory, dream and myth, rumour and fact. Born in Nigeria, her performances and installations have been shown in, England, France, Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, Czech Republic and the United States. She imagines a future where performance, physiotherapy and technology meet at a powerful junction to upgrade the current definition of healing.
India Sky’s interdisciplinary art practice of film, dance, acrobatics, music, writing, and storytelling investigates the invisible forces of power, ancestry and spirit that shape her experience, and engages radical imagination as a source for transformation, communion, homecoming, liberation, and survival. Her work as a stage and film director, producer, choreographer and performer is guided by her passion for worldmaking and her practice of creating and contributing to platforms that uplift Black, queer and femme voices. www.indiaskydavis.com
CIL is a South-London born sound artist who experiments in the field of electronic music, using a blend of spoken and sung poetry, and live electronics to communicate aspects of her identity. Her most recent creation is Juniper, an electronic MIDI instrument she built during lockdown.
Sola is a South-London based musician who fuses her love for ambient electronics with R&B and Jazz to create a hypnotic blend she calls ‘warped soul’. The self-produced, classically trained musician released her debut project, ‘Wealth Has Come’ in 2018. Its follow up, ‘Mami Wata’ was released in October 2020 and explores the divine power of the deity which shares the same name.
Summer Pearl is is an independent Music Artist from North-West London, based in South-East London. Since leaving the BRIT School of Performing Arts in 2012, Summer has been consistent in writing, recording and gigging in the UK and around the world. "My music is a meditation on my past and a reflection of our present. It is both a personal and political message exploring black and female liberation and love gained and love lost. It is heavily influenced by Jazz, Soul, Hip-Hop and Dub; I channel the experiences of ancestors, women and myself to conjure these emotions." In 2017, Summer collaborated with producer Eva Solaris on a project entitled Sol Tempo; releasing 2 singles 'Green Eyes' (to be re-released by Summer Pearl in 2021) and 'Daughter of the Prophet'. In 2019, Summer collaborated with Colombian born, London based producer Alma, in which she released her debut E.P. 'Only Child' and many singles in 2020. Known for her care-free live performances and to- the- point lyrics, Summer-Pearl transcends you to a place of Soul and Truth.