Simone Leigh: Marcus Garvey Park

August 25, 2016 - July 25, 2017 - Simone Leigh synthesizes the multimedia artist’s recent forays into the public realm with her longstanding interest in African and African-American material culture and female identity. The exhibition, a particularly elaborate imba yokubikira, or kitchen house, stands locked up while its owners live in diaspora, will insert three structures, reminiscent of imba yokubikira (kitchen houses) from Shona-speaking rural areas of Zimbabwe, into the landscape of Marcus Garvey Park. Approximating the scale and outer texture of the round, clay-and-thatch imba, the structures will be arranged in a cluster to suggest a community; however, all will be without entrances, to both celebrate a diaspora and evoke the displacement it involves.