About the Exhibition:
Expanding on her previous body of work, Esiri Erheriene-Essi’s Homecoming explores home in the context of Black diasporic identities. Transforming vintage vernacular photography into large scale paintings, she reimagines scenes of daily life in explosive color and textured impasto. Paint becomes a form of speculative history, privileging neglected, untold, and forgotten narratives.
Across the many diasporic cultures and geographies reflected in her source material, home looks different. An American football team grins in a huddle; a Cameroonian father and his children drink on a ferry as they pass the Bay Bridge; a photo booth captures a family road tripping down the Scarborough coast.
Erheriene-Essi’s compositions capture the small moments that scaffold legacy— photographs, incomplete stories, and scraps of memory honor the legacies of Black ancestors that traveled far and wide, making homes and fostering community wherever they landed.
“Let us continue in our ancestors’ footsteps and legacies and invent, imagine, and create the power our freedom, liberation, and a new world requires.” – June Jordan
Homecoming welcomes Erheriene-Essi back for her second exhibition at Anthony Gallery, preceded by her participation in 2022’s group show, What It Could Be. The exhibition is on view at Anthony Gallery at 1360 W. Lake Street in West Loop from December 1st to January 6th, 2024.
Nikkolos Mohammed is a fine artist based out of Los Angeles, California. He received his Bachelor’s of Fine Arts Degree with an emphasis in painting from Otis College of Art and Design in 2013.
In 2014, he and fellow artist Mike Reesé founded DREAMHAUS, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and multifaceted art collective. DREAMHAUS is dedicated to implementing arts as an educational tool and a vehicle toward universal innovation in South Los Angeles.
Nikkolos’ artist practice reclaims hybrid identities through creating hybrid forms. He has exhibited two solo shows in Los Angeles and exhibited in other markets, such as New York and Berlin. Nikkolos also serves as a writer and editor for publications such as Germany-based LeMile Magazine, as well as Hypebeast, an online publication.
As a visual maker, he has collaborated with brands such as Coors Light in a global campaign, the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) for a social justice cause, and has featured works in television and film sets.
