a most beautiful experiment, 2024

wani toaishara is an artist who approaches the political with a deeply poetic sensibility. Across photography, film, installation and performance, toaishara contends with the effects of colonialism on Africa and its diaspora and how, in turn, it has shaped an image history. In his work, Black life is celebrated and joy and community are centred. Often drawing on the pictorial codes of studio portraiture, staged tableaux and the family album, toaishara is conscious of the way performance can be revolutionary and how collective energy is built through care and embodied action.

a most beautiful experiment responds to Congolese photographer Jean Depara's documentation of Kinshasa's nightlife in the 1960s. Full of life and music, Depara's photographs animate a moment in history after the Democratic Republic of Congo gained independence from Belgium's brutal colonial occupation in 1960. toaishara's film is a non-narrative tapestry that foregrounds the role of dance as an agent of self-possession; the urban environment a stage for a transformative and intentional act of freedom-making. In its use of dance as a mode of poetic activism, this film sits in gentle dialogue with works in the adjacent exhibition.

Courtesy of the artist
© wani toaishara