Bloc Billboard: Kedisha Coakley
13 November – 28 February
Free & Open to All
We are delighted to present Negritude No. 10, a new work by Kedisha Coakley, who is the third artist to present work as part of the 2020 Bloc Billboard Commission programme.
Coakley’s work uses sculpture, photography and printmaking to reframe history, race, culture and conventions of curation. Through juxtaposition, process, hybridity and materiality, her work proposes a space without specific explanation and encourages viewers to reconsider social-historical narratives.
Coakley’s recent interest lies in exploring the designs and popularity of wallpaper between the 18th and 20th centuries, which coincided with the expansion of the British Empire. This ties into her investigation of Afro hair and its place in her Black womanhood. Photographs of braided hair form the key components of her wallpaper works, which are developed through collagraphy and the layering of collage, embossing, and weaving. The resulting mural-like wallpapers use pattern to interrupt the canon of Western iconography and its relation to colonial histories. Exploring themes of home, memory and identity to encapsulate and reinforce ideas of class, status and cultural affiliations, Coakley challenges the stereotypes that are often still subtly repeated in today’s wallpaper designs.
To learn more about the research and development of this project and to know more about this processes behind Coakley’s work, visit our dedicated ‘Research’ section of our website.
Kedisha Coakley (b.1982, London) is of Afro-Caribbean descent. She lived most of her life in London, moving to Sheffield 11 years ago were she lives and works with her two children. Kedisha is the recipient of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park Yorkshire Graduate Award 2020 and Omni Artist award 2020 and is currently studying an MFA in Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam University following the completion of her BA at the same institution.
Recent exhibitions include Sheffield Institute of Arts Level 6 Interim Exhibition, 2020, Bloc Projects, Sheffield, Bloc Projects Member Show (selected by Eva Rowson), 2019, Bloc Projects, Sheffield and 132 Exhibition, 2019, Smithfield Studios, Sheffield.