Let Them Consume Me In The Light, a solo exhibition of new works by internationally acclaimed conceptual artist Esmaa Mohamoud. The exhibition examines what Mohamoud calls “Black body politics”—a web of interconnected personal, social, economic, and historical factors that shape how Blackness is perceived by Black people and nonBlack people alike. The title alludes to the inevitability that Black cultural products and their creators will be exploited by majoritarian society. “They’re already gonna consume us, it might as well be out in the open,” Mohamoud says.
Replacing monolithic depictions of Black culture with more layered representations, Let Them Consume Me In The Light elucidates the complexity of the narratives shaping contemporary Black body politics. Mohamoud creates space in which to reconsider our nostalgia for misremembered, and often misrepresented histories, and invites us into a more open and multitudinous relationship with Blackness than we have had in the past.
