Kevin Diallo 'unrooted'

Kevin Diallo’s solo exhibition, unrooted, features cyanotype prints on Dutch wax fabric and canvas. His work has long explored institutionalised ideas of Black and African authenticity. He breaks down and challenges these concepts through a variety of mediums.

In many cultures, the cutting of hair is performed as a ritual from birth to death. Seen in this light, hair is a testimony to one’s emotions, trauma, and experiences. Haircutting goes beyond the aesthetic and is performed as a release from old energies, patterns, belief systems and connections.

This exhibition is an intimate exploration of ritual haircutting and the transformative experience lived by the artist after cutting his dreadlocks of ten years. The resulting series of abstract positive and negative cyanotype prints vibrate with the rhythmic energy of swirling lines, suggesting the movement and change of the artist’s evolution, but also perhaps of creation itself, with strands of matter forming new worlds. The cyclical nature of life, death and rebirth is present throughout this body of work.

Kevin Diallo
unrooted
22 Nov – 11 December 2022

Image Credit: Kevin Diallo   Still Searching 2022   cyanotype on Dutch wax fabric   52 x 49 cm