The Showroom | Thick/er Black Lines present a screening of Black British Women/Femme Filmmakers

Curators Rianna Jade Parker & Aurella Yussuf of Thick/er Black Lines with Writer Derica Shields present a screening of Black British Women/Femme Filmmakers (including Ayo Akingbade, Jessica Ashman, Cecile Emeke, Zinzi Minott, Emily Mulenga, Jenn Nkiru and Yero Timi-Biu)

Screening included:

Ayo Akingbade, Street 66 (2018)

Jessica Ashman, Hold Tight (2018)

Cecile Emeke, an entirely sincere, comprehensive and essential step by step guide to creating a film: the black london edition (2018)

Zinzi Minott, Fi Dem (2018)

Emily Mulenga, 4 survival 4 pleasure (2017)

Jenn Nkiru, Hub-Tones (2018)

Yero Timi-Biu, Beneath The Surface (2017)

Image: Aurella Yussuf, Derica Shields & Rianna Jade Parker in conversation. Screening Documentation, 2019, Courtesy of Prada.

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Thick/er Black Lines is an interdisciplinary research-led initiative applying contemporary art theory, cultural studies and social practices to rewrite histories and to negotiate a way forward. Using print, typography and design our intention is to artistically and intellectually testify to a transnational and a Black European diaspora. We are intent on building upon an outdated framing of Black British art as new needs, professions and technologies emerge. Our unique interactions and narratives show a difference and relatedness across nations and routes. Polarised by curiosity and concern we acknowledge the presence of us all and begin placemaking with consideration to the pluralities of Blackness in and out of this world.

Image: Thick/er Black Lines, Screening Documentation, The Showroom, London 2019, Courtesy of Prada.
Image: Thick/er Black Lines, Screening Documentation, The Showroom, London 2019, Courtesy of Prada.
Image: Thick/er Black Lines, Screening Documentation, The Showroom, London 2019, Courtesy of Prada.
Image: Thick/er Black Lines, Screening Documentation, The Showroom, London 2019, Courtesy of Prada.
Image: Thick/er Black Lines, Screening Documentation, The Showroom, London 2019, Courtesy of Prada.
Image: Thick/er Black Lines, Screening Documentation, The Showroom, London 2019, Courtesy of Prada.
Image: Thick/er Black Lines, Screening Documentation, The Showroom, London 2019, Courtesy of Prada.

This programme takes place within Theaster Gates's installation Black Image Corporation presented by Prada, The Vinyl Factory, and The Showroom. Collective Intimacy is inspired by Gates’s ethos of collaboration and The Showroom’s commitment to togetherness and communal knowledge, taking on multiple trans-located narratives of the current Black experience as a point of departure for a cosmopolitan worldview. In response to Gates’s reactivated spaces in Chicago and how his socially engaged projects enable communities to connect and grow, Collective Intimacy aims to create a new space for people to gather, listen, converse, and contemplate amongst a fusion of art, design, music, and everyday life.

Black Image Corporation presents distinct spaces creating a myriad of possibilities for collective engagements, featuring an installation of Gates’s art objects, furnishings, and new films that capture the methodologies of urban renewal and community activation founding his practice. Pieces from Chicago imbued with powerful histories, uses, and localities resonate with distinctive lounge design from here in London – like a love letter between two cities, under the roof of a new House. Taking place at both 180 The Strand and The Showroom, Collective Intimacy hosts interdisciplinary interventions by artists, musicians, designers, writers, thinkers, collectives and members of the public, who are all invited to distort notions of selfhood and togetherness in the spirit of creating a global community.