David Alekhuogie: Reclaim and Reconstruct
Yancey Richardson gallery presents “highlifetime”, an exhibition by David Alekhuogie that examines who shapes and defines the African and African-American cultural narratives.
In his series “A Reprise”, David Alekhuogie reflects on how African artifacts entered Western art history, catalogued through colonial eyes, stripped of their original functions and meanings, and transformed into museum pieces. Engaging with Walker Evans’s 1935 photographs for MoMA’s “African Negro Art” exhibition, the artist reanimates these displaced forms through multilayered collages.
David Alekhuogie, Scramble for Africa 2-3, 2023.
David Alekhuogie, Nefertiti as Elizabeth "A Reprise", 2024.
David Alekhuogie, Mother Country Masque 1, 2024.
David Alekhuogie, Standing Ancestral Figure Drawing 1 (Deconstructed), 2024.
Also on view is a selection of photographs from ‘Pull_Up’ (2017), where Alekhuogie reimagines the sagging pants trope as a visual study of color and texture. Flattened and abstract, these compositions transform the body into a landscape for exploring Black masculinity and coded identity.
David Alekhuogie, Pull_Up R,b,w, 2017.
David Alekhuogie, Pull_Up b,b,b, 2017.
David Alekhuogie, Pull_Up k,w,r, 2017.
The exhibition “highlifetime” is on view at Yancey Richardson gallery in New York City until October 18.
