partus/chorus - Galerie Frank Elbaz (2022)

May 28 - July 30, 2022
partus/chorus: Eniola Dawodu, Doreen Lynette Garner, Ja'Tovia Gary
Galerie Frank Elbaz, Paris, France

She made no request to become the Mother.
However. Partus.
The Mother brought us forth. Sequitur.
We follow. Ventrum.
from the belly. The Mother brought us forth.
We follow. from the womb.

She was the mother of all living things. We were wounded for the Mother’s transgressions, and she bruised for yours and mine. The Mother performs a psalm of our iniquities, a Blackened enfleshment as we become undone and (re)form within the Mother’s womb. We join her chorus. We sing of the Mother’s condition, and, in turn, of our own. Bone of her bone. Flesh of her flesh. Tear of her tear. We spill. We raise our hands. We shout YES to the female within, for the Mother lives within us. She lives there, even with the knowingness of objects not being able to withhold that ontological and corporeal geography. For even as some forget the Mother, no one can forget that they were afraid. They were fearful, and we were fearfully made.

The transferal of her dispossession to her child is the Mother’s only claim. Through the child’s dispossession there is no destination, but rather ghostly fingerprints that trace back to her womb. It is a melodic cry so loud and so haunting that it would only be a mistake to forget her. Since her capture, The Mother has no specified gender, but rather only her body that has been broken for you and for me. Held by the hold she was urged to submit to the law which presupposes her as an object of Black life-worldmaking. An object of our afterlives. A figure of our afterlives. A spirit of our afterlives. A righteous anger rebuking our afterlives. A love sustaining us within our afterlives. We join her chorus. We sing of the Mother’s condition, and, in turn, of our own.

- Zalika Ibaorimi

partus/chorus is the first exhibition curated by filmmaker and multidisciplinary artist Ja’Tovia Gary.

The exhibition includes works by Doreen Lynette Garner, an in-situ installation by Eniola Dawodu, as well as a largescale video mapped sculptural installation by Ja’Tovia Gary.

Photo: Claire Dorn

May 28 - July 30, 2022
partus/chorus: Eniola Dawodu, Doreen Lynette Garner, Ja'Tovia Gary
Galerie Frank Elbaz, Paris, France

Eniola Dawodu, Threshold. Thoroughness of threads, 2022
Photo: Claire Dorn

May 28 - July 30, 2022
partus/chorus: Eniola Dawodu, Doreen Lynette Garner, Ja'Tovia Gary
Galerie Frank Elbaz, Paris, France

Eniola Dawodu, A confluence of lineage, 2022
Photo: Claire Dorn

May 28 - July 30, 2022
partus/chorus: Eniola Dawodu, Doreen Lynette Garner, Ja'Tovia Gary
Galerie Frank Elbaz, Paris, France

Eniola Dawodu, Threshold. Thoroughness of threads, 2022
Photo: Claire Dorn

May 28 - July 30, 2022
partus/chorus: Eniola Dawodu, Doreen Lynette Garner, Ja'Tovia Gary
Galerie Frank Elbaz, Paris, France

Eniola Dawodu, Threshold. Thoroughness of threads, 2022
Photo: Claire Dorn

May 28 - July 30, 2022
partus/chorus: Eniola Dawodu, Doreen Lynette Garner, Ja'Tovia Gary
Galerie Frank Elbaz, Paris, France

Eniola Dawodu, A confluence of lineage, 2022
Photo: Claire Dorn

May 28 - July 30, 2022
partus/chorus: Eniola Dawodu, Doreen Lynette Garner, Ja'Tovia Gary
Galerie Frank Elbaz, Paris, France

Ja'Tovia Gary, as you yield her your body and soul, 2022
Photo: Claire Dorn

May 28 - July 30, 2022
partus/chorus: Eniola Dawodu, Doreen Lynette Garner, Ja'Tovia Gary
Galerie Frank Elbaz, Paris, France

Ja'Tovia Gary, as you yield her your body and soul, 2022

KING COBRA (documented as Doreen Lynette Garner), AFTER HER WOMB, 2020

Photo: Claire Dorn

May 28 - July 30, 2022
partus/chorus: Eniola Dawodu, Doreen Lynette Garner, Ja'Tovia Gary
Galerie Frank Elbaz, Paris, France

KING COBRA (documented as Doreen Lynette Garner), EPIGENETIC NACRE NOIRE, 2019

KING COBRA (documented as Doreen Lynette Garner), "AS THE GAUZE IN MY MOUTH FILLED WITH BLOOD AND MY LIMP BODY HIT THE CONCRETE, I REMEMBERED JOICE HETH”, 2020

Photo: Claire Dorn