Everlyn Nicodemus: Uncaged Identities
By Joanne Yau
2024 is nearly over. In such a turbulent year with endless wars, political changes, and social tumult, I oftentimes found that, like many others, I needed art to find moments of solace amidst the messiness of reality. Everlyn Nicodemus’ (born 1954) solo retrospective at the Edinburgh Modern One, which she collaborated with during the curation process, did precisely that. The best way to describe the Tanzania-born artist is “a marriage of contraries”. While rooted in the ever-pressing issues of society, ranging from the to the struggles of womanhood, to the ambivalences of transnational identity, and racial oppression, Nicodemus’ work counterbalances these difficult themes by embracing the intrinsic complexities of human identity and celebrating the power of the artistic voice. She understands that her art does not always offer concrete resolutions, but nevertheless manages to carve an intimate space for her individual vision and grounded optimism.
Given that Nicodemus’ oeuvre spans over 40 years, I was pleasantly surprised by how organised the exhibition layout is. Spread over approximately ten rooms, the different sections never feel like they are blending into each other. They effectively highlight the distinctive tones, themes, mediums, and stages throughout the artist’s career, but one could still grasp the interconnectedness of Nicodemus’s ideas. By accident yet potentially for the better, I visited the rooms in reverse chronological order, making Nicodemus’ journey – from her early Tanzania years to her adolescence and first encounters with racism in Sweden, to her later prolific achievements and solo exhibitions in India, Belgium, and the UK – even more inspiring.
Nicodemus’ use of medium and form is where her expertise shines the most, and she is unafraid to experiment with representations of the human body. Dove Egg, a series of sculpture collages, is striking for its unconventional materiality. Displaying mannequins, different textiles and female body parts eerily caged behind galvanised wire, it offers a tactile look into the constraints society places on female sexuality and of Nicodemus’ own struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The section “Returning to Life” was also mesmerising. It features paintings from her 84-piece series titled “The Wedding”. Rather than a jovial union, these paintings highlight one’s uneven recovery process after a traumatic event. Saturated hues of orange, green and yellow in Silent Strength 38 show female figures caught in a warm embrace while entrapped within a domestic space, signifying a hope for healing. While Nicodemus alludes to the grand master in her Picasso-esque compositions, abstract lines, and anatomical forms, she believed he was largely misogynistic and channeled such attitudes into his artistic depictions of women. Her feminist retellings contain nothing of Picasso’s objectifying nuances and tightly focus on the female body’s capacities. These works exemplify her “marriage of contraries” – she asserts art as a mediator between the opposite ends of oppression and freedom, unequivocally creating her own liminal space to testify to the female individual’s strength.
In a similar vein, Nicodemus’ depictions of motherhood and black female flesh exude a naked vulnerability, celebrating facets of femininity that are often neglected or thwarted in traditional narratives. After the Birth visualises the figures of a mother and her baby in a field of black and white lines, evoking the poignancy felt after childbirth. Set Free is a call for female solidarity under the patriarchal Tanzanian cultural system, with female silhouettes and faces composed of white wavy lines set against a black background. Nicodemus portrays the shared desires of women she spoke to in various parts of Tanzania – Arusha, Dar es Salaam and Moshi respectively – and unites them under a collective vision, creating a piece that is simple yet provocative.
Nicodemus also confidently asks the viewer to question their own identities. Having lived in different countries, Nicodemus’ art transgresses any totalising, uniform notion of cultural belonging. She believes that she has no “mother tongue in the common sense – Chagga, Swahili, English, Swedish? – I have always lived with translations. I looked upon myself as a nomad and I was always prepared to move on, to go on anywhere.” This transnationalism is reflected in her portraiture. Self-Portrait deviates from any traditional conception of the portrait, featuring human/animal hybrid faces in juxtaposing colours to render an interwoven fabric of the self. What is admirable is that Nicodemus does not suggest a lack of belonging, but rather her life is inherently composed of a vibrant admixture of different backgrounds and locations. This piece offered a personal moment of reflection – somehow, the notion of not having to confine yourself to a singular prescriptive identity was comforting.
An interview with Nicodemus filmed for the exhibition ties together these thematic strands satisfyingly. In a 12-minute video, she offers a comprehensive view of the broader struggles of being a black female artist, whilst covering Tanzania’s post-colonial social progression, the racial hegemonies that still dominate the art world, the lack of a stable African art archive, the experience of finding her own footing in a patriarchal society and more. She delicately balances the personal with the worldly, delineating the complicated web of social dynamics that informs her and her community’s existence. But she is not wholly disillusioned – she determinedly asserts herself as a key player in the African modern art field, putting forth how one small voice can resist preestablished structures.
I left the exhibition thoroughly impressed, and all I can say is that it is impossible to distill the range of topics and artistic techniques Nicodemus explores into a short review. One of the downsides of having a showcase that tackles so many distinct yet connected ideas is that you want a fuller picture of each section, but they are all brilliantly contextualised, possess a unique flair, and elucidate Nicodemus’ liberatory voice. Strangely enough, I left simultaneously thinking that human identity is so complex that it is fundamentally unquantifiable, while feeling I’ve obtained a vivid profile of Nicodemus’ multifarious positionalities and geographical identities, spread across diverse timelines and spaces – artist, writer, curator, wife, mother, Tanzania, England, Sweden, and so much more.
Bibliography
‘Everlyn Nicodemus’. 2024. National Galleries of Scotland <https://www.nationalgalleries.org/exhibition/everlyn-nicodemus>