Transfiguration
Curated by Fatima Bocoum
follow Undercurrent Projects
forthcoming: interview on Artsy (check back soon!)
Curator’s Statement:
TRANSFIGURATION celebrates womanhood through 50 paintings, photographs and illustrations created by seven women-identifying artists from different parts of the world depicting the many states, forms, and emotions women bear in silence. It is a journey into what we are as women, what we could be, and must become despite the adversities, a glimpse into the intricacies of the mundane with an inevitable conscience awakening. Inspired by a poem of William C. Hannan, Fatima Bocoum, the curator, explores the meaning of life, questioning the triggers to a state of transfiguration, and what this translates itself into for women across eras, cultures, and social conditions. A socio-political endeavor, Fatima aims to break boundaries, break silence and taboos. “I call women to stand up and speak out, to challenge the status quo with unabashed convictions and with the knowledge that no lasting change occurs without pains and fears, that together we can, and today, as women, we are closer than ever before.”
About The Curator
Fatima Bocoum is the Founder at Openletr, a New York City based feminist blog created for women and the celebration of their achievements with the goal to eradicate marginalization and shape women’s narrative. A Chinese-born Malian citizen, Fatima grew up in Libya, Saudi Arabia, and Mali. Born to a family of diplomats and one of the most selective tribes in Africa that perpetuates consanguineous marriages of teenage girls, she realized at a young age that cross-generational divides with respect to socio-cultural dynamics leave many women unfulfilled given their inabilities to make choices solely based on their wills. And as a survivor of sexual abuse, she made it a personal mission to enable women to live unwaveringly and empower one another.
About The Artists
Fatoumata Diabate
Born in 1980 in Bamako, Fatoumata Diabaté, a Malian photographer, was one of the first to integrate the Promotion Framework for Photography Training in Bamako (CFP), which aims to professionalize Malian photographers, initially for a two-week internship. Spotted for her motivation and talent, she remained there for two years, then completed her training in Switzerland at the Vevey Vocational Training Center, and returned to the CFP in Bamako, where she became a technical assistant from 2007 to 2009. Fatoumata’s studies gave her the opportunity to establish herself as one of the most promising Malian Photographers through Black and White Film Photography, and participate in many collective and individual exhibitions and obtained several awards, including the Africa Prize from the French Association for Artistic Action (AFAA) at the 2005 edition of the African Photography Meetings in Bamako for her work Touaregs in Gestures and Movements. Fatoumata Diabaté also produced reports for World Press Photo6, Oxfam and Rolex. Portraitist, social photographer, her work focuses mainly on women and younger generations.
Joanne Leah
Joanne Leah is an artist based in New York City. Her photo-based work explores themes of sexuality, isolation and identity. With each image, she creates a transcendent experience through a feeling of confinement and meditation, using contorted nude body parts, bold color, and tactile materials. She uses common objects in unexpected ways while arranging the body, so it appears confusing or broken, ultimately transforming the image into a therapeutic symbol that is part of its own visual language. The images themselves become proof of a vulnerable act, between skin and viscera, exhibitionist and voyeur, public and private.
Meryl Meisler
Meryl Meisler was born 1951 in the South Bronx and raised in North Massapequa, Long Island, NY. Inspired by Diane Arbus and Jacques Henri Lartigue, Meryl began photographing herself, family, and friends while enrolled in a photography class at The University of Wisconsin, Madison. In 1975, Meryl returned to NYC and studied with Lisette Model, continuing to her hometown and the streets of NYC. After working as a freelance illustrator by day, Meryl frequented and photographed the infamous New York Discos. As a 1978 CETA Artist grant recipient, Meryl created a portfolio of photographs exploring her Jewish Identity for the American Jewish Congress. After CETA, Meryl began a 31-year career as a NYC Public School Art Teacher. Upon retiring from the NYC public school system, Meisler began releasing large bodies of previously unseen work. Meryl’s first monograph A Tale of Two Cities: Disco Era Bushwick (Bizarre, 2014) received international acclaim. The book juxtaposes her zenith of disco photos with images of the burned out yet beautiful neighborhood of Bushwick, Brooklyn in the 1980s. Her second book, Purgatory & Paradise SASSY ‘70s Suburbia & The City (Bizarre, 2015), contrasts intimate images of home life on Long Island alongside NYC street and nightlife.
Dawn Okoro
Nigerian-American artist, Dawn Okoro lives and works in Austin, Texas. Her primary areas of focus are painting, video, and wearable art. She received a bachelor’s degree in psychology with a minor in fashion design from the University of Texas, and her law degree from Texas Southern University. Her desire to become an artist spawned from a love of fashion illustration, photography, and design. Okoro was selected for the Contemporary Austin’s 2018 Crit Group. Her work has been featured in Forbes and Drawing Magazine. She has shown at the Texas Biennial, The George Washington Carver Museum in Austin, New York University, and the MoCADA Museum in Brooklyn.
Tana Torrent
Tana Torrent (Gayle-Reveault) is an English-born artist. Studying and growing up in London provided plenty of artistic stimulation. Tana moved to Paris around the age of 19, where she continued her independent studies with a focus on photography. In Paris, she began exploring galleries alongside her mentor, who continued supporting her craft, as she debarked in New York. Tana currently resides in Brooklyn, NY, works in photography, and has ventured into painting as a means to manage and express her emotional experiences.
Nichole Washington
Nichole Washington is a visual artist working and living in New York. In 2016 she graduated from the School of Visual Arts, where she earned a masters degree in digital photography. Since earning her degree, Nichole has been creating mixed media works exploring women’s identities and the state of empowerment. Nichole’s work is featured in the inaugural issue of MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora. She has exhibited her work in galleries around the United States including at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History. Nichole has led workshops at the Lower East Side Girls Club and at 29Rooms as an Artist in Residence.
Irina Tsypilova
Artist, journalist, designer. Born in Crimea, she studied at the Art Lyceum in the city of Sevastopol (2002) and the University of Humanities in St. Petersburg (2006). Since 2011, she has been living and working in Vienna (Austria). Irina uses different styles, heavily graphic-based, her first series of work remained within the monochromic boundaries. Since then, she experimented, mixing different techniques from collage and graphic to mosaic and drawing. Each project is an exploration, a combination of incompatible parts to create an image and convey an emotion. The latest experiments are mosaics. When creating the paintings “Golden Nymph” and “Josephine” more than 10,000 layers were used.
undercurrent projects 