About the Event
Sugarcane is Sweetest at the Joint: Solo Exhibition by Malaika Temba
Open to the public 6-9 PM
In her first exhibition at the Mindy Solomon Gallery, Malaika Temba explores femininized “sweetness” and creative labor. Temba’s works speak to the notion of craft, multiculturalism and place—whether it be transitory or permanent. Temba’s multiculturalism and Tanzania/Swahili Coast lineage connect her strongly to the history of trade, agriculture and trucking.
Temba learned how to make visual art from listening to music. Hip-Hop—how it involves layering, a multimedia collage of instruments, voices, and machinery, and how it has the ability to convey universes of meaning via an iconic beat or ad-lib… Her work is inspired by the storytellers who relate the nuances of their experience to an overarching mission, who place Hip-Hop in its historical context, and who think about how the self-referential world honors, condemns, and progresses culture and cultural analysis.
Using textile as a visual language, Temba creates brightly colored traditionally woven fabrics as well as large silk tapestries that contain silk-screen printed fragmented text. Her work is a distillation of global, political and emotional ideas via innovative combinations of media and processes. She works by writing from research and experiences, translating textual ideas into visual ones, and expressing these essential ideas in immersive, experiential ways. Paint, stamps, stencils and spray paint over woven and silk-screened fabrics convey historical truths in a contemporary platform.
Malaika Temba is a textile artist based in New York, and is influenced by art at the intersection of visuals and sound. A 2014 YoungArts award winner in Visual Arts, she is also the 2021 recipient of YoungArts’ Jorge M. Pérez Award—an unrestricted prize of $25,000. Outside of her studio practice, Temba has worked as Assistant Art Director and Print Designer at Pyer Moss, and as a Design Consultant at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Temba is originally from D.C. and Tanzania, and graduated with a BFA in Textiles from the Rhode Island School of Design.