Freedom in Multitudes

Roisin Jones’ Freedom explores the veil between mythology and reality prevalent in the African and Caribbean diasporas. Jones depicts a dream in which she wrestles with an alligator, attempting to subdue it with bonds. Eventually, Jones gives in, allowing the bonds to break and leaving her destiny to fate. This symbolises freedom for both parties: for one, freedom from fear; for the other, freedom from its crippling entrapment. Jones and the alligator then flee the river, with Jones riding on its back, signifying the unification of the artist’s two selves. Not long after she illustrated this dream, Jones decided to pursue art professionally: “It is a reminder to me that the journey to authenticity and self-expression is fraught with danger, but to leap and go with it anyway. It reminds me to answer the call to my vocation as an artist and to embrace oneself in the face of adversity, to be wild and boundless.”

Jones’ depiction of her ultimate destiny as a form of spirit animal references the Jamaican River Mumma, a mythical human-fish/serpent chimera that is believed to be the guardian of the water and its treasures. In her oeuvre, the artist repeatedly draws inspiration from folklore, Afrofuturism, and Black feminist ideologies. Her use of indigenous knowledge and cosmologies as an allegorical framework enables us to understand who we are. Water and River Mumma share the characteristics of being simultaneously nurturing and life-giving, and dangerous and destructive — a reminder of the facets existing within humans.

In her series, I’ve Been Seeing Angels, photographer Rachel Seidu similarly uses nature as a narrative tool. The series questions what it would feel like to free one’s creative mind and be stripped down to the essence of one’s being. It also speaks to the delicate balance between playfulness and depth, using everyday features as totemic objects. The water symbolises the ebb and flow of life, whilst the endless horizon mirrors the expansiveness of the mind; the balloons represent the levity of an unchained mind, and the football adds playfulness, reminding us that the “self” flourishes most when it reconnects with the innocence and spontaneity of childhood.

For artists Afeez Onakoya, Amanda Shingirai Mushate, and Ousmane Bâ, traversing the scope of one’s identity takes place via the manipulation of traditional figuration. Bâ’s works and influences stem from his existence as a Fulani Senegalese-Guinean living and working in Japan. Employing Nihonga, a traditional Japanese painting technique, Bâ elevates the human form. Like sculptures in motion, the bodies come to life against a backdrop of washi paper collage. Warm and cold tones intertwine harmoniously, creating characters with diverse stories but a shared sensitivity. Constantly evolving, Bâ’s transversal practice navigates across various cultural and geographical influences.

Like Bâ, Onakoya employs traditional methods to achieve unconventional results. His works act as a testament to his mastery of charcoal and figuration, transcending boundaries to create dynamic compositions of contorted, kinetic bodies. Exploring the efficacy of form as a tool to convey emotions, Onakoya’s works compose a visual poem of bodies existing in a liminal space — a place where they are free to simply be.