Ufuoma Essi (b. 1995, Lewisham, South East London) is a video artist and filmmaker working predominantly with film and moving images as well as photography and sound.
Her work revolves around Black feminist epistemology and the configuration of displaced histories. The archive forms an essential medium for her as an artist and it’s through explorations with the archive that she aims to interrogate and disrupt the silences and gaps of political and historical narratives. By using the archive as a process of unlearning and discovery she seeks to re-centre the marginalized histories of the Black Atlantic and specific histories of Black women. Drawing from a range of influences including Black popular culture, films, music, historical texts and Black feminist theory from writers such as Claudia Jones to Daphne Brooks. Essi’s work also seeks to examine the historical and contemporary links between the Black Atlantic and explores intersectional themes of race, gender, class and sexuality.
Her films have been screened and exhibited at film festivals, institutions and galleries both nationally and internationally including Lisson Gallery, South London Gallery, Criterion Collection, Douglas Hyde Gallery, Public Gallery, Galerie Rudolfinum, Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival, Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, Maysles Documentary Center and Black Star Film Festival.
