Based in Venice since last April, the 193 Gallery continues its series of exhibitions Colore e Materia with its second installment entitled Traits to remember: the aesthetics and politics of black portraits. Through the practice of portraiture, the artists Sesse Enlangwe, Idris Habib and Bara Sketchbook perform a work of memory by celebrating the black body.
Portraits of black people are rare and often marginalized in the history of art. Yet, this interculturality is not faithfully reflected in the visual arts prior to the 1950s. Indeed, if the genre of portraiture has evolved greatly in painting with the remarkable and valuable contributions of European masters in particular, its development has been to the detriment of black bodies.
Originally from West Africa and working between Africa and the United States, Sesse Enlangwe, Idris Habib and Bara Sketchbook capture a look, an emotion. With this body of work, the exhibition creates a new contemporary iconography of the African community and its diaspora.
