Uses of the Ironic

Uses of the Ironic is the first solo exhibition dedicated to the inventive and whimsical practice of Philadelphia-based multimedia artist Rashid Zakat. The exhibition highlights the artist’s experiments in film, video, sound, performance, and digital illustration. Inspired by sampling and remixing in hip hop culture, Zakat dismantles and reassembles conventions of cinema and video art to create new experiences with the medium of moving images.

Poet Audre Lorde’s seminal essay, Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power, is an instructive and foundational text for Zakat, connecting his own sense of aliveness and play. He leans into the collaborative practice of filmmaking, which rejects the notion of the individual auteur through which genius is channeled, and instead takes up a Black feminist understanding of shared labor, intellect and creative contribution.

With the pieces included in this show, Zakat aims to galvanize a relationship between his audience and the work: inviting joy, ecstasy and humor to invoke a transcendental experience. He seeks to disrupt the systemic suppression of Black people and center their exigencies, curiosities, ways of relating to one another, and modes of collective expression. In this sense, scholar Kevin Quashie’s notion of a Black aliveness is the political imperative of Zakat’s work, whereby he seeks to create openings for audiences to be loud, inspirited, and to revel in the glory of communal exhilaration and pleasure.

This exhibition is curated by Maori Karmael Holmes, Chief Executive & Artistic Officer of BlackStar Projects. Exhibition design & installation by Tim Belknap. Rashid Zakat Studio managed by Katy Bagli. Installation photos by David Evans McDowell.

Funding for this exhibition was provided in part by The Mellon Foundation & William Penn Foundation.