The Internet is exploitative, exclusionary, classist, patriarchal, racist, homophobic, transphobic, fatphobic, coercive and manipulative. We need to decolonise and heal our technologies. Healing is resistance.
Tabita Rezaire
Exotic Trade is Tabita Rezaire’s first solo exhibition in which she deploys ‘digital healing activism’ as a strategy to envision decolonial technologies through which we can ‘holistically connect to ourselves, to one another, to the earth and to the multiverse’ (Rezaire).
This otherworldly exhibition digs into the histories, politics and memories of information and communication technologies (ICT), exposing the violence and erasure carried by our current networks and unearthing possibilities for spiritual technologies.
Through video installations and digital prints, the artist responds to a perceived need to reconnect body, ‘womb-mind’ and spirit to heal the ‘oppressive colonial hierarchies of knowledge systems which define the dominant narratives of our time’ (Rezaire).
Exotic Trade explores ‘alternative’ means of receiving, creating and sharing information through spiritual interfaces by accessing what Rezaire terms the ‘cosmos database’ – from communicating with ancestors to embracing water, the womb and teacher plants as ‘primal-portals’ for ‘downloading’ knowledge.
In the show, Rezaire draws parallels between the layout of submarine optic cables (the very architecture of the Internet) and colonial trade routes to point to the powerful symbolism underpinning ‘electronic colonialism’ whereby the Internet has literally been built on routes of Black pain.
Through video installations and digital prints, the artist responds to a perceived need to reconnect body, ‘womb-mind’ and spirit to heal the ‘oppressive colonial hierarchies of knowledge systems which define the dominant narratives of our time’ (Rezaire).
Exotic Trade explores ‘alternative’ means of receiving, creating and sharing information through spiritual interfaces by accessing what Rezaire terms the ‘cosmos database’ – from communicating with ancestors to embracing water, the womb and teacher plants as ‘primal-portals’ for ‘downloading’ knowledge.
In the show, Rezaire draws parallels between the layout of submarine optic cables (the very architecture of the Internet) and colonial trade routes to point to the powerful symbolism underpinning ‘electronic colonialism’ whereby the Internet has literally been built on routes of Black pain.
For Rezaire, ‘the irony is that the technology of the Internet would not exist without the influence of African spiritualities because the origin of computing science has, in fact, been traced back to African divination systems’. Rezaire uses screen interfaces within her practice to remember the ‘space-time’ where technology, the biosphere and the spiritual world connect.
Exotic Trade will be arranged in the shape of a womb to create a ‘nurturing space that connects us to the source’, says the artist. This composition relates to the intention behind key pieces, which celebrate the resilience of Black womxn in the face of colonialist and capitalist exploitation. Rezaire seeks to mark the contribution of Black womxn to the advancement of medical science and technology – often unwillingly and painfully, such as with gynaecology - and confront the erasure of Black womxn from the dominant narrative of technological achievement.
Rezaire grapples with inherited traumas that burden Black womxn’s ‘soul-bodies’ and re-construes Black, femme erotic power as a creative and transformative energy. Her mission is ‘to reimagine a politics of pleasure driven by unapologetic desire, spiritual awakening, love and compassion’ (Rezaire).
Artworks
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Artist Bio
Tabita Rezaire (b.1989, Paris, France) is infinity incarnated into an agent of healing, who uses art as a means to unfold the soul. Her cross-dimensional practices envision network sciences – organic, electronic and spiritual – as healing technologies to serve the shift towards heart consciousness. Navigating digital, corporeal and ancestral memory as sites of resilience, she digs into scientific imaginaries to tackle the pervasive matrix of coloniality and the protocols of energetic misalignments that affect the songs of our body-mind-spirits. Inspired by quantum and cosmic mechanics, Tabita’s work is rooted in time-spaces where technology and spirituality intersect as fertile ground to nourish visions of connection and emancipation. Through screen interfaces and collective offerings, she reminds us to open our inner data centres to bypass western authority and download directly from source.
She has a Bachelor in Economics (Fr) and a Master of Research in Artist Moving Image from Central Saint Martins (UK). Tabita is a founding member of the artist group NTU, half of the duo Malaxa, and the mother of the energy house SENEB.
Recent solo exhibitions include: 'Tabita Rezaire. Calabash Nebula,' Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid (2024); 'Fusion élémen.terre,' Les Abattoirs, Tolouse, France (2023); 'Tabita Rezaire: Symbiose Immaculée,' IMPAKT and Centraal Museum (2021); 'Tabita Rezaire: EXOTIC TRADE,' Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa (2017).
Group exhibitions include: 'Sex Reenchanted,' Heidelberger Kunstverein, Heidelberg, Germany (2024); 'Omi Libations' (2024) at project space of the Schering Stiftung, Berlin, Germany; 'Actions for the Earth: Art, Care & Ecology,' Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois (2024), 'THIS IS NOT AFRICA: UN-LEARN WHAT YOU HAVE LEARNED' at ARoS, Aarhus Kunstmuseum in Aarhus, Denmark (2021); Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, Denmark; 'Goddesses of Healing,' M.Bassy, Hamburg, Germany (2021).
Rezaire has shown her work internationally – Centre Pompidou, Paris; Serpentine London; MoMa NY; New Museum NY; MASP, Sao Paulo; Gropius Bau Berlin; MMOMA Moscow, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; ICA London; V&A London; National Gallery Denmark; The Broad LA; MoCADA NY; Tate Modern London; Museum of Modern Art Paris – and contributed to several Biennales such as the Lagos Biennale (2024); Guangzhou Triennial (2018); Athens Biennale (2018); Kochi Biennale (2018); Performa (2017); Berlin Biennale (2016).
Rezaire lives and works in Cayenne, French Guiana. where she is currently studying agriculture and birthing AMAKABA —her vision for collective healing in the Amazonian forest. Tabita is devoted to becoming a mother to the world.
