Arit Emmanuela Etukudo is an interdisciplinary artist. Her practice explores AfroFrequency and the Black Radical Imagination by combining self-portraits, moving images, installations, poetry, performance, and soundscapes. She delves into the ontology, mysticism, history, and transcendental realities that form the core of AfroExistence, as a meeting place for transformation and antiquity. Using imagination to emancipate identity by challenging conformity, she prompts viewers to reimagine narratives shaping Black existence. She explores AfroExistence not as an extension of Western ideas of the future but as the magic that lies at the root of African existence and self-retrieval.
Residency project:
For the residency, she proposes "I used to breathe fire”, a 20-minute moving image installation/dance piece exploring the movements of a core existence attempting to detach itself from its shadow as an act of survival.
"The project is currently in its beginning stages. The residency will enable me to create the choreography and some moving images that will be composited into the final film. I will also use the time at the fellowship to write prose that will be used in an interconnected performance piece."