15 Jul – 6 Aug 2022
Jaywalk, a term coined in the 1920s in the US as part of propaganda led by the automotive industry to ridicule pedestrians crossing roads at the wrong place. Targeted mostly at those who migrated from the countryside to the cities, who were dazzled by the wonders of urbanisation in 20th century America.
Between 1870 and 1920, America witnessed the largest mass movement of people from rural America and across the world to American cities and by 1920, more Americans lived in cities than in rural areas for the first time in the US history. Since then, this pattern of migration as a result of urbanisation and globalisation has shaped modern society: people moving from rural areas to cities, from far flung parts of the world to major Western cities either for economic opportunities or through forced displacements. And as they come with their hopes and aspiration and cultural norms, they are confronted by the written and unwritten rules that frame the boundaries of their possibilities in their host communities.
In the context of the exhibition, Uzor use the term jaywalk to interrogate the multiplicity of mass movement: mass migration, religious exodus and processions and how the movement of people, across borders and public spaces depending on the controls and lack of enforced by the state, and community shape the perception and collective experience of society regarding what is right or wrong, what is truth or lie, what is an acceptable norm.