Tabita Rezaire

Born in 1989 in Paris (France)
Lives and works in Johannesburg (South Africa)

Tabita Rezaire is a French – of Guyanese/Danish descent – video artist, health-tech-politics practitioner and Kemetic/Kundalini yoga teacher based in Johannesburg. She holds a bachelor’s degree in economics (Paris) and a master’s degree in artist moving image from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design (London). Rezaire is a founding member of the artist group NTU, half of the duo Malaxa, and mother of the energy house SENEB. Artsy declared Rezaire among the “emerging artists to watch for in 2017,” Artnet among the “international Black artists of 2016,” and True Africa amid the “top opinion makers of the African continent in 2015”. In 2017, she presented her first solo show, Exotic Trade, at the Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg. Her work has been shown internationally – notably at the Victoria and Albert Museum (London), the National Gallery of Denmark, the Berlin Biennale, the Tate Modern (London), the Museum of Modern Art (Paris), MoCADA (New York City), and The Broad (Los Angeles). She has also presented her work on numerous panels – Het Nieuwe Institut (Rotterdam), the Royal Academy (The Hague), the Kunsthalle (Bern), the National Gallery (Harare), Cairotronica (Cairo), Fakugezi Digital Art Africa (Johannesburg). Rezaire has curated screenings at the Institute of Contemporary Art (London), led spiritual technology workshops worldwide, and seen her writing published by Intellect books. Tabita Rezaire’s practice unearths the possibilities of decolonial healing through the politics of technology. Navigating architectures of power – online and offline – her works tackle the pervasive matrix of coloniality and its effects on identity, technology, sexuality, health and spirituality. Through screen interfaces, her digital healing activism offers substitute readings to dominant narratives, decentering occidental authority.

Inner Fire is a series of life-size digital self-portrait collages exploring the politics of the artist’s identities, aspirations and contradictions. The images respectively embody an archetype of the black woman in regard to race, sex, spirituality, technology and capital, mapping how those narratives affect her own as well as collective imaginaries and identities.