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Sending My Love To You, Baby

08/11/24 - 14/12/24
Haricot Gallery is delighted to present Sending My Love To You, Baby, a joint exhibition between artists and friends Bernice Mulenga and Joy Yamusangie. 
 
The title for the exhibition, a joint decision from the pair, emits an assured certainty, a declaration of love with clear intention. It implies a love that you already know exists, but in this specific moment is being directed to you, Baby. Though the “you’s” in question are varied for both artists, as familial, romantic and friend based relationships are featured, throughout each work is a tenderness that is beautifully expressed across mediums. 
 
Drawing from the temporal notion of “sending” love, in the works we face the action of love and touch on the idea of it being ongoing, continuously rippling as it is extended and finds new forms. Through their photographs, Mulenga offers a glimpse into the kinship with their younger sister and cousins. As the series forms partially around grief within their family, there is a call inward amongst each of them to send love, to reiterate its existence. A small act of defiance to the consuming nature of grief. 
 
In Joy’s paintings we meet the uncertainty of navigating the medium through which love is sent. The works look at the complexities of how and when romantic love is expressed, and its transformative nature as it reaches new forms. Birds and birdlike figures reappear, both as messengers and to symbolise transitions. 
 
Within Sending My Love To You, Baby Mulenga and Yamusangie offer a message, an action, a gliding movement of impermanence but ultimately and always, of love.
 
Words by Ellen Morrison
Joy Yamusangie
Joy Yamusangie is a visual artist living and working in London. Yamusangie’s work exists both within dream and reality, creating fictional characters and worlds that provide insight into the artist's real life. They experiment with a range of processes such as drawing, film, painting and collaging to produce mixed media pieces. 
Their work often discusses trans masculinity, intimacy and Blackness from a personal perspective. Yamusangie’s previous work includes a public art installation commissioned by Tate (2018), being selected for the RA Summer show (2021) and a solo show at Tiwani Contemporary in (2023). Their work has appeared in editorials for The Fall Magazine and British Vogue and in 2021 they were commissioned by Penguin to create the cover for the C.L.R James’ novel, Minty Alley.
Bernice Mulenga
Bernice Mulenga is a British-Congolese photographer with a distinct aptitude for archiving, documenting and interrogating the world around them. Their work centres around the search for intimacy. Primarily looking at themselves, the Black queer global/local community and the experiences found within them. This can be found in their ongoing photo series  #friendsonfilm. An archive that has been growing since 2015 and continues to shape with time. Their work is an exploration of recurrent themes surrounding movement, identity, sexuality, grief, darkness, bonds and kin. Mulenga's film Let's Move On was selected as the winner of the 2024 CIRCA Prize.
List of Works
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