Black History Month: Dani Orefo
Dani © Dani Orefo
Daniella Chukwuezi (b. 1998, Lagos), artist name Dani Orefo, works across the mediums of design, photography, and moving image. Currently a student at the University of The Arts London, she was previously self-taught, starting off her career with a six-part zine series JIGGY created and curated by herself at the age of 17. In 2019, she began an art collective DRTY SLK which deals with themes of sustainability and community.
Images presented here are a part of Orefo's The Black Female Look' 2017 – Forever series, where she acknowledges the power of images in a socio-political context. Here, she makes a point that unrepresentative or positive images of black women can influence racist and sexist stereotypes or empower the females, respectively. Orefo uses her project to resist the dominant "white male ideology", which often dominates the media.
“Black women in the creative industry can bring a new way of looking at the world, a new gaze, that is as a tool to begin to break down and redress sexist, racist themes in media by using politics and aesthetics to challenge the dominant ideological framework mainstream media relentlessly operates within."
You can see more of Orefo's works here or follow her on Instagram.
An Attack On the Norm, 2018 @ Dani Orefo, the Black Female Look 2017 – Forever.
