Azania lands in SoHo
An Interview with Joshua Obawole Allen, on the occasion of Athi-Patra Ruga's exhibit Lord, I Gotta Keep On Moving
The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art is always on my itinerary when I make the rounds of what’s on in the downtown galleries. And one current show, Athi-Patra Ruga’s Lord, I Gotta Keep on Moving, curated by Stamina Gregory, is a stand out. Textiles bring Ruga’s pantheon of chosen ancestors into the room, photo stills and video work connects us to fantasy production at the heart of trans kinship, and the global North picture of the world is inverted to draw power and beauty from a mythic land of South African origin: Azania.
I may discuss the show more fully in a future post, but for today I had the chance to share spacetime with an artist bringing black Atlantic community into activating the gallery. Joshua Obawole Allen (full bio at the end) is a Brooklyn-based artist who, as our exchange below shows, shares my affective attunement to the black trans diasporic divinity on display in this show. In what follows, we discuss Ruga’s work (on view until Jan 18, 2026), the lineage of black trans and queer activism and art from South Africa to New York City, and Allen’s upcoming performance in the space.
Q: The first thing I notice in the space is the astounding illuminated sculpture of Francois (Féral) Benga which was so dynamic it was rotating in my mind, if not in reality. At the same time, the title of the show is a call out to Bob Marley and the Wailer’s Keep on Moving — made famous in the dadrock intelligentsia by the UB40 cover. How do you relate to these Pan-Africanist Two-Tone histories that are everywhere in Athi-Patra’s candy-colored world?
I’ve had several chances to sit quietly with Athi’s work in the gallery. What I love the most is how the work references biblical archetypes and grapples with serious questions without taking itself too seriously.
The sculpture of Benga is a standout for me, too. For my upcoming performance at the Leslie Lohman Museum, I have been working with my creative team to visually tether my performance costume to the exterior of that sculpture. Without giving too much away, let’s just say I’ll be borrowing a jewel or two. You’ll have to join us on Thursday night to see exactly what I mean, but I’ve been deeply moved by the luminous, layered world that Athi has created here. And I am excited for our work to be in further conversation together.
Q: How do you respond to the idea of chosen ancestors? Who are yours?
A: So much of who we are, and how we move through the world, is shaped by those who come before us. In a literal sense, I’m guided by Assata Shakur, who transitioned into ancestorhood earlier this fall. And Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, who I’ve had the honor of knowing since I was 17. She would always encourage me to be my full, unruly, sexual self. My life is all the better because of it.
Figuratively, I also think about how the natural elements around us hold memory. Waves uses ocean water and human hair to bridge the ruptures left by the transatlantic slave trade—acts of remembrance made material. I take comfort in knowing that the elements: earth, water, salt etc shape who we are. They ground us. They remind us where we come from.
Athi-Patra Ruga, Escape to the End of History (2015)
Q: Your generation seems unbothered by the global circulation of words like “trans” and “queer,” which my generation worried would flatten out cultural difference. By any cursory view of this show, I see we were kidding ourselves: black diasporic genders and sexualities exceed the feeble capacities of Western concepts to frame them. And yet, there are still so many tactics for repelling, seducing, and subtly mocking the white gaze in this show. How does that resonate with your own practice?
A: The work that speaks to me most is the kind that makes your heart skip a beat and your palms sweat a little. It lingers in your body long after the moment ends. That’s what I strive for in my practice: to make work that leaves me, and others, transformed.
When I’m creating, I try to leave behind questions of how the work will be read, decoded, or framed. Not because those conversations don’t matter—but because carrying them into the studio weighs me down. I create the work I need to see in the world. I follow what feels urgent, what feels honest. That in itself feels like a kind of rebellion against the white gaze: refusing to center it. I’m not making work in reaction, I’m making it in affirmation. So in that way I resonate with Athi’s practice a lot!
Joshua Obawole Allen
Q: South Africa has a place of honor in the international freedom struggle for black folk, and the first nation-state in the world to enshrine LGBTQIA+ rights in the constitution. Has South Africa played a role in your life or imaginary?
I have a deep, personal relationship with Mzansi. I first visited the country at 19 years old, visiting both Cape Town and Johannesburg, organizing with the Trans Collective during the height of the Rhodes Must Fall and Fees Must Fall movements. Since then, I’ve returned many times—producing creative interventions like Femme In Public SA, shooting portraits like Lifeblood with them.us, and building relationships that have shaped who I am.
My new piece Waves is partially inspired by my time in South Africa. That’s why activating this exhibition at Leslie Lohman feels like such a full-circle moment for me.
Q: This space gives such pride of place to performance. Is there anything you can share with my readers about what we can expect at yours?
This will be my third time performing Waves, and each iteration is different. The piece shifts depending on who’s in the room—what they carry, how they breathe, how they witness. On Thursday I would expect a meditative atmosphere, one that invites pause, presence and maybe a little of seduction too.
Q: I know friends in New York will be sure to turn out for that. Returning to South Africa for a moment, I had no idea you had such a deep relationship with the movement there. We will have to have another conversation about that, since I believe that the full story of Rhodes Must Fall as the ignition for a global black youth movement has yet to be told here in the US. No doubt because the story isn’t finished. But my final question comes after hearing you describe yourself in a prior interview as growing up “too African to be American, too American to be African.” As someone born in Chicago, raised in Kenya, I related so much to that statement. How does the place of ritual and adornment in your work help you transcend that false distinction?
A: Unfinished for sure—with infinite space to expand in the future.
To answer your final question, my new work Waves: A Meditation was born out of that internal conflict of feeling too half to be whole. I think many of us feel that way. For years, I never spoke about it; it was too painful, too shameful to name aloud. Fortunately, my practice as an artist has become a space where I feel safe enough to explore what once went unspoken. A space to transform what was once a source of pain into a site of power.
For Thursday’s performance, I will soak my hair in two liters of ocean water—one collected from the Atlantic Ocean at the Cape of Good Hope, the southernmost tip of the African continent, and the other from Shinnecock Beach in what is now known as Southampton, New York. So much of our collective history was lost or erased during the passage of African bodies across the Atlantic. In this piece, I engage the theory of cell memory—the idea that our cells retain traces of past experiences and histories, shaping who we become.
For the duration of the performance, I lay supine in meditation, my hair—my living archive of cells—immersed in this water that connects both of my homes. I invite others to sit with the questions that dwell quietly within us but too often go unasked: Who are we? Where do we come from? Each time I perform Waves, the weight of those questions feels just a little lighter.
Joshua Obawole Allen, Waves: A Meditation (performance film still)
Joshua Obawole Allen is a multidisciplinary artist whose work spans across the mediums of portraiture and performance to explore memory, transformation, and Black queer heritage. Their work has been exhibited at the Leslie-Lohman Museum, MoCADA, and NYU’s Center for Black Visual Culture. They have held prestigious residencies at the Brooklyn Museum, the Watermill Center, and Silver Arts Projects at the World Trade Center.