Melding photography, textile and sculptural form, these individual narratives accumulate into a wider consideration of how we come to know the world around us, and the different kinds of knowledge we permit ourselves to recognise.
Taking its title from an Igbo prayer, In Daylight or in Dream unfolds through a series of works that each assume a life and inner logic of their own. Some belong to daylight, grounded in the physical world; the experiences and bodies that take material form within it. Others belong to dream, drawing from a spiritual world that has long occupied Emezi’s practice: one shaped by intuition, ancestral knowledge and an attentiveness to chi, exceeding what can be physically seen.
This movement between daylight and dream gives the exhibition its internal rhythm. Emezi allows each work to determine the world it inhabits and the story it carries, moving between what is lived, what is sensed and what is received. Melding photography, textile and sculptural form, these individual narratives accumulate into a wider consideration of how we come to know the world around us, and the different kinds of knowledge we permit ourselves to recognise.
In Daylight or in Dream extends Emezi’s longstanding engagement with Igbo cosmology while marking a more expansive turn towards storytelling in her practice; each work situated somewhere within the breadth of physical and spiritual worlds.