Masks Off: Reflecting the african art movement from modern to contemporary onto local to global

Mask off was curated by Rahiem Shadad in 2022. Rahiem is a curator from Sudan. He was the second 2021 Curatorial Residency Fellowship Recipient. In this exhibition, artworks are looked at as an expression and a documentation of experiences. Layers of artistry that resulted from various absorptions and the reactivity of the artist to them. The layers that make up an artwork overlap just as much as personality make-up does. The conversation put forth through the exhibition focuses on both the content reflected by the artists in their works and the languages and artistic vocabulary used. The exhibition will also give examples of artworks where foreign iconography (to the artist) can be used to express something which is local (to the artist) such as traditions or history, and vice versa. It will provide a new narrative, different from the classical one, to understand art produced by Africans in a global world that is constantly exchanging thoughts and ideas.