AJAMU: ARCHIVAL SENSORIA

London’s CUBITT GALLERY is currently presenting a  solo exhibition of new and archival works that spotlight Black Queer legacies in Britain by photographer, artist-scholar, archive curator, and radical sex activist Ajamu X, curated by Languid Hands.

Drawing on Ajamu’s personal archive, collected over the artist’s 30-year career, as well as previously unexhibited contact sheets, personal photos, and community documentation, Ajamu: Archival Sensoria is a celebration of Black queer life and a visual tribute to the generative creativity of LGBTQ+ and gender non-conforming lives.

Throughout his practice and in an ongoing capacity, Ajamu has chosen to document key figures in Black British queer life through portraiture to resist erasure and ensure they are visible in the archive. In this newly commissioned body of work, a series of 22 portraits, taken with the theme of reverence in mind, Ajamu documents an intergenerational group of people who have each contributed to a robust and vibrant Black queer linage in contemporary Britain; artists, photographers, DJ’s, activists, campaigners, writers, thinkers and more. 

In addition, a series of three upright vitrines entitled Archiving Sideways, first shown in 2015, have been restored and updated with ephemera from throughout Ajamu’s life and work. In a separate, darkroom-styled space, a reel of his works, erotic and otherwise, are presented for the first time in a gallery setting. Ajamu: Archival Sensoria pays homage to the passion, intimacy, sex, desire, and love that exists within black queer communities.

The artist’s fine art photography explores desire, fetish, and the Black male body – as well as founding the Black Perverts Network in the 1990s. “My politics have always been to create the space that I needed to step into first and then create a space whereby Black men could come and talk, connect, play, fuck, eat, drink, get tied up, get pissed on if they wanted to. Without being judged,” the artist says. “That was the Black Perverts Network.”