ValUE

ValUE is a multi-layered project created by contemporary dancer and artist Valerie Uchechukwu Ebuwa. She incorporates her own body in order to show different perspectives on the black female nude image and challenge the notion of ‘unfamiliarity’ of this subject. Throughout the history of art, the nude as a genre has always employed and objectified the black body as ‘exotic’ and foreign subject. In the modern world, we believe in the diversity of beauty and the irrelevance of labels: ‘black’, ‘female artist’, ‘exotic’. However, today the image of a black body is evidently less represented in major institutions which claim to reject the Eurocentric view on art and dance. Being a highly sought-after dancer and model, Valerie uses her own body to contribute to the demolition of contemporary hierarchy. She incorporates the works by other artists who used her body as an object for their illustrations, paintings and photographs – and reverses the subject-object interrelations. Valerie’s solo work has been described as ‘the embodiment of the free black femme form’ filling the gap of the resistance dancer thats missing in current 21st Century art.