Bwo gallery is pleased to present as its inaugural exhibition The Defiant Ones, Sesse Elangwe’s debut solo exhibition in his home country, Cameroon. Elangwe, a self-taught artist based in San Antonio (Texas, USA), creates disarming and elevating portraits of Black figures that investigate themes related to self-development and empowerment within Black communities. The Defiant Ones, which opens on 2 September, will be on view through 23 September 2023.
The word defiance in the context of this exhibition symbolizes the culmination of experiences and the coming to a point of self-realization where it becomes necessary for one to identify, then dismantle the barriers that pose as obstacles to personal growth and success. To explore this notion, Elangwe employs figuration initially as a way to document Black life at different stages of human existence, but ultimately as a means to uplift the communities he belongs to in Cameroon and in the United States.
Elangwe’s new body of work draws inspiration from his personal encounters of spaces, histories and cultures. After listening to Nina Simone’s first civil rights song ‘Mississippi Goddam’ (1963), Elangwe felt encouraged to engage with his own history and life before moving to the United States in 2021. Forced to flee his home country due to the ravaging civil crisis affecting the Anglophone regions of Cameroon where he was based, Elangwe’s new paintings reveal various spectrums of Black life, from precarity, to survival and love, all set in Buea, Cameroon. The artist’s subjects are everyday people represented in dignifying and defiant portraits, that contribute to amplifying the representation of Black figures and inserting them in art historical canons.
