Shanique Emelife, Belonging, 2021
The warmth that is created by community is elegantly conveyed in Shanique Emelife’s sensitive paintings. Village, her current show at Fortnight Institute in New York (until 9 January 2022) is an exploration of humans’ relationship with one another through eye contact, physical touch and social gathering. Even figures who appear to be alone, those sitting on their own or standing off to the side of the group, are shown in relation to the life around them, whether the more sociable main group of people or the plants that surround them. “The village is not a mute and static object,” writes the gallery. “It comes alive in the intimacy that we let in.”
