6/3: THE SHADOW ON THE GROUND // new work by ALEXANDRIA EREGBU at The Luminary
THE SHADOW ON THE GROUND
new work by ALEXANDRIA EREGBU
Opening Reception: Friday, June 3, 7-10 PM
The Luminary
2701 Cherokee St.
St. Louis, MO
Alexandria Eregbu, Black Object / White Smoke IV, 2015, archival pigment print, 24 x 30 in.
With The Shadow on the Ground, Alexandria Eregbu offers a meditation on Black mobility, ontology, and embodied traumas in response to an unprecedented three year period of virally witnessing public deaths (and other unjust violence) of Black bodies on social media.1
Frequently employing photography, sculptural objects, and installation, Eregbu strategically summons shared narratives and mythology to address worldliness, politics, familial histories, and the metaphysical. From the epochal site of Igbo Landing to DuBois’ metaphorical veil, her grandmother’s kitchen to the Atlantic Ocean, Eregbu’s unwavering curiosity in mapping psychic space (however tangible or ephemeral), leads visitors within the gallery. Through her acknowledgement of transcultural customs and blurring lines to create additional spaces for simultaneous mourning, healing, and celebration— this investigative process for Eregbu typically ends in the very same place as it always begins— weaving itself through global events both past and present, and relying on intuition to further excavate placehood and placelessness, being Black beyond America, and constantly longing for home.
1 (See: Trayvon Martin, Rekia Boyd, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Sandra Bland, Laquan McDonald, and the Bring Back Our Girls Campaign for the 234 kidnapped Nigerian schoolgirls).
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Alexandria Eregbu (American b. 1991) is a conceptual artist and disciplinary deviant. Her practice often takes shape in the form of maker, performer, curator, educator, and programmer. Eregbu has been featured in a range of exhibitions including Roots & Culture, Weinberg/Newton Gallery, the Arts Incubator in Washington Park, and Hyde Park Art Center, in Chicago, IL; Milwaukee Art Museum in Milwaukee, WI; Distillery Gallery in Boston, MA; and Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, NY. She was a recipient of the Propeller Fund Grant (2013), the DCASE IAP Grant (2015) and has held numerous fellowships as both curator and artist. Most recently she was highlighted in Newcity’s Breakout Artists: Chicago’s Next Generation of Image Makers (2015). Eregbu is a current Resident Artist and Curatorial Fellow with ACRE. She received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.