Installation
4 Survival 4 Pleasure
4 Survival 4 Pleasure, a video artwork and sequel to my 2015 work Orange Bikini, follows my avatar on a journey through a succession of luxurious digital landscapes, claiming for herself a sense of absolute agency through the multifaceted ways she presents herself.
The piece touches on aspects of cyborg theory, as laid out by Donna Haraway in her foundational text A Cyborg Manifesto (Haraway, 1984). I also took note of Derica Shields’ comments on the subject area from the panel conversation Do You Follow? Art in Circulation 3. The video work also runs with the assertion that whether she is a concert pianist or dressed in jewels and feathers for carnival that a woman is equally valuable, important and justified. Embodied as a central theme is the desire for those who are marginalised to not only survive, but to find joy and thrive.
Bio
I (b.1991, UK) gained a BA in Fine Art from Birmingham City University in 2013 and have since participated in shows across the UK, around the world and online. I am currently undertaking my MA in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Arts, London.
My practice incorporates video and digital technology as well as analog media. I am currently interested in ideas around pleasure and anxiety experienced as a millennial woman. I have previously explored themes including the nature of consumption in an age when it is possible for everyone to become simultaneously producers and distributors; the use of technology to influence and track the physical body; and imagining worlds in which my digital avatar is presented with an escapist utopia where she, a mixed-race black woman, can thrive.
My first major solo exhibition, Taking Up Space, opened in October 2017 at Firstsite, Colchester. In 2016 I released a short film for Channel 4’s Random Acts programme.
@mulengamoji