CINCINNATI, OH.- The story of two Iraqi brothers who escaped from Baghdad in early 2002 becomes a vehicle for British-born, NY-based artist Jane Benson to explore the social reverberations caused by geo-cultural separation.

The artist uses music to tell the story in a dual-channel video entitled Finding Baghdad (Part A) which serves as the show’s centerpiece.

The video begins with two instruments as they are perfectly split in two, then proceeds to a virtual duet played by the brothers on these half instruments, each on their own screen, from their respective new homes in Germany and Bahrain.

In the process the brothers momentarily bridge the distance through an emotional ballad that marries technology and tradition. Half-Truths also includes sculpture, drawing and weaving to expand upon the themes of division and connection.

Precariously balanced on tables and mirrors, Benson’s hybrid instruments stir uneasiness in the viewer as their off-kilter nature suggests perpetual turmoil.

In a sister work shredded flags combine all the emblems of the countries where the brothers’ immediate family live.

Along with drawings made by repeated turns of her half-instruments, charcoal self-portraits made by blindly rubbing her own body and a series of incised texts that transform book pages into musical scales, Benson cobbles fertile new forms from the fractures of old.

NJIDEKA AKUNYILI CROSBY THE PREDECESSORS
When Njideka Akunyili (b.1983) left Lagos for the U.S. at age 16 she detoured from her initial plan to be a doctor to pursue painting and fulfill the urge to tell another side of Nigeria’s story.

“America has a lot of people talking about how Nigeria doesn’t,” she says. “Often people have a singular view about Nigeria and Africa. But problems of misrepresentation happen when people tell your story for you.”

To posit a pronounced, but hybridized voice she fuses painting, drawing, collage and the use of transfers – a typically Western printing process that involves transferring ink from photographs using solvent.

Akunyili Crosby builds up the transfer images of popular culture to reference traditional African textiles, creating quilt-like pieces that speak to post-colonial identities and traditions being pieced together.

Her first paintings navigated the domestic landscape of life with her new American husband and intimate scenes of their wedding and home.

The Predecessors mines deeper into Akunyili Crosby’s past, collecting portraits of her Nigerian family in a range of domestic settings.

This exhibition unites this seminal series for the first time, bringing together individual pieces from London, Johannesburg, New York and Los Angeles to celebrate a formative body in an artist’s rapidly emerging voice.