Talk

BLACK VENUS: Aindrea Emelife in conversation with Sharmadean Reid

in partnership with The Stack World

Book ticket

Fri 21 Jul 2023

19.30-20.30

£5

Portico Rooms

South Wing

Aindrea Emelife, curator of BLACK VENUS sits down with Sharmadean Reid, founder and CEO of The Stack World, to unpack the exhibition and legacies and shifting perceptions of Black women throughout history.

Aindrea Emelife, curator of our summer exhibition BLACK VENUS: Reclaiming Black Women in Visual Culture, joins Sharmadean Reid, founder and CEO of The Stack World: a media platform for connecting mission-driven women with the goal of moving the needle on gender equality and increasing the global GDP of women’s economy.

Drawing on Reid’s work advancing gender equity and social empowerment, Emelife and Reid will discuss how depictions of Black women and socio-economic understandings of Blackness intersect with women’s access to leadership. The two will embark on a discussion of the legacies and shifting perceptions of Black women throughout history and through to present day.

Sharmadean Reid.jpg

Held in the intimate environment of Somerset House’s Portico Rooms, your ticket also includes a complimentary glass of Veuve Clicquot champagne. If you’re lucky enough to look under 25, we may ask for proof of age before serving your drink.

This live event will also be streamed online to members of The Stack World community.

VISIT BLACK VENUS

An exhibition bringing together the work of 18 Black women and non-binary artists to explore the othering, fetishisation and reclamation of narratives around Black femininity.

About Aindrea Emelife

Aindrea Emelife is a Nigerian-British curator and art historian specialising in modern and contemporary art, with a focus on questions around colonial and decolonial histories in Africa, transnationalism and the politics of representation. Aindrea is currently the Curator, Modern and Contemporary at EMOWAA (Edo Museum of West African Art), a new David Adjaye designed museum complex and cultural district in Benin City, Nigeria due to open in stages from 2024.

Born in London, United Kingdom, Emelife studied at The Courtauld Institute of Art before embarking on a multifaceted career as a curator and art historian, producing highly acclaimed exhibitions for museum, galleries and private collections internationally and quickly becoming a groundbreaking new voice.

In addition to the Fotografiska, New York, and Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD), San Francisco, runs of BLACK VENUS, recent exhibitions include Bold Black British at Christies, London (October 2021) and Citizens of Memory, The Perimeter, London (May 2021). Emelife’s first book, A Brief History of Protest Art was released by Tate in March 2022, Emelife has contributed to exhibition catalogues and publications, most recently including Revising Modern British Art (Lund Humphries, 2022) In 2021, Emelife was appointed to the Mayor of London’s Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm.

About Sharmadean Reid

Sharmadean Reid graduated from Central St Martins with a First Class degree in Communication and became a brand consultant and fashion stylist for Nike, Asos and Arena Homme +. She started WAH as a hip hop magazine for girls in 2006 while still at university. She then founded WAH Nails as a side project in 2009.

WAH changed the beauty landscape with its millennial voice, feminist attitude and innovative salon space. She then wrote two books, delivered global pop up nail salons for 100s of brands, created a product line with Walgreen Boots Alliance and was awarded an MBE from HRH Queen in 2015 for services to Beauty and Women. In 2018, she founded Beautystack with Dan Woodbury and Ken Lalobo becoming one of the first Black women in the UK to raise venture capital funding, from Local Globe and Index Ventures.

Community has always been central to Sharmadean’s work and mid pandemic, in March 2021 she launched The Stack World, a platform that enables women to find, create and grow their own community.

Drinks provided by