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Melvin Edwards x Karimah Ashadu: Sculptural Cadence

Thursday, Feb 6, 2025, 7 pm – 8.30 pm

“Cadence” in Melvin Edwards’s practice means the pinnacle moment when individual metal elements are fused together in the welding process to form a single work of art. Metal meets metal, and in this meeting, the viewer receives insight into the orchestration of his ideas: the socio-political underpinnings of his practice – rooted thematically in race, social injustice, protest and the political turmoil of the civil rights movement in the USA.

In her own practice, Karimah Ashadu regards the filmic editing space as “sculptural”. In earlier works, she created mechanisms for the camera and conceived the space between the lens and the subject as malleable, lending itself spatially in sculptural cadence. Just like Edwards, Ashadu integrates found objects and materials into her work, whose interest lies both in their functional value as everyday tools and in their symbolism. As the change in context of the objects and materials used by the artist instantly alters their inherent value, allowing them to enter the realm of art, this technique also ties into questions regarding the worth of Blackness and the African, especially in the Global North.

Biography
Karimah Ashadu (b. London 1985) is a British-born Nigerian Artist and Film Director living and working between Hamburg and Lagos. Ashadu’s practice is concerned with labour, patriarchy and notions of independence pertaining to the socio-economic and socio-cultural context of Nigeria and its diaspora. Her work has been exhibited and screened at institutions internationally, including the 60th Venice Biennale, where she was awarded the Silver Lion for a Promising Young Participant in the International Exhibition. Her work has been shown at Tate Modern, London, Secession, Vienna, Kunstverein in Hamburg, South London Gallery, MoMA – Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève.

Ashadu is the recipient of other awards such as the Prize of the Böttcherstraße in Bremen (2022) and the ars viva prize (2020). Public collections include MoMA, the City of Geneva Contemporary Art Collection and the Federal Collection of Contemporary Art, Germany. Fellowships include the Abigail R. Cohen fellowship at the Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination, Paris, in 2021. In 2020, Ashadu established the film production company Golddust by Ashadu, specialising in Artists’ films on black culture and African discourses.

Admission is free. No registration required. Language: English.