Video Shot By: Sam Johnson
Imani Roach: Old Habits Are Harder To Kill Than Love
Original Opening: March 6, 2020
Closed For COVID-19: March 11, 2020
Re-Opened: September 12, 2020
Closed: September 26, 2020
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
When does the flower in the vase learn that it has been separated from its roots? Why are easily recognizable patterns of the mind and heart so difficult to alter? Inspired by a quote from Zimbabwean author Chenjerai Hove, Old Habits Are Harder To Kill Than Love, explores the nature of love, loss, mourning and customs both individual and collective. Taking an alchemist’s approach to sculpture, this show also pays homage to artist Imani Roach’s personal pantheon of black female performers.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Imani Roach is a Philadelphia-based art historian, visual artist and musician. Across disciplines, she is interested in the surveillance, consumption and expression of black emotion, and her visual work often explores this terrain using labor-intensive, craft techniques. A former editor at both Artblog and Guernica magazines, she currently teaches classes on African and Afro-Diasporic art at UPenn and the University of the Arts. She is a co-founder of The Lonely Painter Project (a bi-coastal performance collaborative), and a lapsed doctoral candidate at Harvard writing on black photojournalism in Apartheid South Africa. As a lead vocalist for the York Street Hustle, a 10-piece 1960s soul band, she has the nerve to cover Aretha franklin songs frequently and in public. This lesson in perpetual failure informs this new body of work as it does every other.
More Info: voxpopuligallery.org/artists/imani-roach