LONDON.- Boogie Wall gallery announced the dates for their inaugural all-female exhibition Notre Dame/Our Lady opening in Mayfair this October (4 October – 27 October). The international group show featuring Peter Beard mentored French-Senegalese artist Delphine Diallo, Swiss-Guinean photographer Namsa Leuba who recently collaborated with Nike and shot the official photographs of the team’s jersey kit for football World Cup 2018 and Swedish artist and model Alice Herbst will mark the launch of Boogie Wall gallery concept which will solely focus on representing international female artists. With an aim to fight the misrepresentation of women in the art world, Boogie Wall will provide a platform for activism and provoke discussion by showcasing art with an impact. The inaugural show brings together three artists from around the world whose practices explore gender and identity in a global scale. Boogie Wall is currently the only female run gallery in London that exclusively showcases female artists.
Boogie Wall gallery is founded by Swiss gallerist and Director Joe, who has prior dedicated her career working in design and fashion industries. Boogie-Wall is launched with an aim to create a platform for innovative contemporary art, where artists can push the boundaries of their mediums, experiment new ideas to highlight the constant change in cultures and society. The gallery’s purpose is to empower women and break down walls formed by gender, race and class. Using art as a catalyst, Boogie Wall wants to generate change and discourse around societal issues. The gallery takes its twofold name from the soundtrack of 1984 Stan Lathan, David V. Picker and Harry Belafonte breakdancing movie Beat Street which features singers Debbie Dee, Sha Rock and Lisa Lee bold electrofunk anthem “Us Girls” that claims women’s prerogative to “boogie too”.
Namsa Leuba will unveil a brand new series of work at Boogie Wall titled “Illusions – The Myth of the Vahine through Gender Dysphoria” which questions the problematic exoticism and sexualisation of Polynesian women in Western art historical narratives. In her work, Leuba addresses the myth of the subservient and beautiful “vahine” of which Tahiti women are referred to in West’s search for “the original” and “the authentic”. Reclaiming the identity and power that was once stripped away by Western male gaze, the artist’s non-binary subjects act out against the Primitivist role of Otherness they were once coerced into. Decorated with traditional cultural and social ornaments, the transgender models are depicted in their native environment covered with body paint, creating a surreal sense of myth and reality and asserting their individuality. Leuba’s work has been exhibited across a number of prestigious art fairs such as Art Basel and 1:54 African Art Fair and she has also collaborated with a number of global brands such as Dior and Nike.
Delphine Diallo immerses herself in the realm of anthropology through her intimate portraiture which she sees as “an adventure to liberate a new protagonist”. In London, Diallo will present her latest body of work titled Women of New York which elevates her female subjects into mythical heroines of everyday life, empowering them and celebrating their individuality. The works in show particularly highlight the artist’s anthropological approach to her practice after living in New York for 10 years during which she assisted and was mentored by the acclaimed photographer Peter Beard whose landmark works depicted the turbulent changes within the African wildlife and landscape.
Alice Herbst’s work has mainly been exhibited in Sweden and described as depicting beautiful women being staged in a vintage manner, creating an environment that visually gravitates towards the stark and sombre realism of Lucian Freud and the suspenseful voyeurism of Alfred Hitchcock. Once a winner of Sweden’s Next Top Model and a cousin of Victoria’s Secret supermodel Elsa Hosk, Herbst’s subtly dramatic paintings are a gem to be discovered. After giving up modelling, Herbst has been working as a visual artist since 2017.
Delphine Diallo is a Brooklyn-based French and Senegalese visual artist and a photographer. Diallo’s work has been featured in a number of prestigious art She has been featured in a number of prestigious art institutions and fairs around the world and she has shot editorial for some of the most prestigious publications in the world, including Vogue, The New York Times, The New Yorker, VICE and many others. She has been featured in a number of prestigious art institutions,
Namsa Leuba is a Swiss-Guinean photographer and art director whose work mainly focuses on the African identity seen through Western eyes. Her work is published in several high end magazines such as i-D, Numero, British Journal of Photography and Interview as well as having her work featured in numerous museums and art fairs such as Tate Modern, 1:54 African Art Fair in London, Art Basel and The Swiss Foundation of Photography.
Alice Herbst is a Swedish painter graduated from the Swedish art school Gerleborsskolan in 2017 and since then she has developed her abstract figurative style with influences from both the impressionism and postmodern era. She describes her paintings as parts of stories that could be self-experienced or inspired by daily observations.
