Two contemporary international artists, Anthony Olubunmi Akinbola and Turiya Magadlela, pull together new works made from nylon pantyhose and durags. Their use of materials, in an array of complexion colors and patterns, results in multilayered artworks shaped by identity-making fashion choices. Durags and tights are commercially available, readymade objects that come into contact with a person’s skin and hair, managing and manipulating physical features and character assumptions. While many athletic dress code policies ban the wearing of durags, hosiery is still closely associated with white-collar worker attire. These tight-fitting cloths increasingly became more affordable due to improved industrial manufacturing, attributing to their domestic and global affiliations with gender and class.
A constant if not consistent motif in the work of Akinbola and Magadlela continues to be the role of painting, its visual construction, where abstraction is reinterpreted in a different medium, a synthetic relative sold under countless brand names in mass fashion. Skin Tight stretches these conversations of innovation, identity, and everyday materials in new directions with breathtaking, artistic creations. Through Magadlela’s and Akinbola’s handling of a variety of flexible fabrics into abstract compositions, they craft unique and varying commentaries on the fetishization and control of Black and Brown bodies—from head to toe.
Anthony Olubunmi Akinbola and Turiya Magadlela is organized by Alyssa Velazquez, assistant curator.