A trade tool and migratory metaphor, the term scirocco has many different names in maritime mythology; known as the North African ‘Arifi,’ this powerful atmospheric formation is defined as a hot wind blowing from North Africa to Southern Europe, reaching places like Marseille with its dust and sometimes heavy rainfall. These winds have both impeded and aided in centuries of maritime transport, including a long history of oceanic slave trade. In his exhibition, ​Conceptual artist Derrick Woods-Morrow extends Scirocco as a symbol of migration, an agent of the Atlantic Ocean, and a tool for considering the placement and displacement of bodies that arrive by water to new lands. Like migration, Woods-Morrow explores image-making as simultaneously participatory and voyeuristic through the insertion of a personal lens onto geographical places, communities, and cultures outside of his home. Woods-Morrow’s photographs are both portraits and non-portraits, sometimes featuring a body, and other times only the suggestion of one—a scribbled blue figure, a crouching blur, a bedroom trinket; Woods-Morrow investigates the body as a stand-in to discuss the ways larger stories of political movement and geographical transience affect Black sexual freedoms. For Woods-Morrow, this gesture underscores poet Audre Lorde’s assertion that the erotic is a source of power, and that all materials hold the potentiality for eroticism. In turn, Woods-Morrow’s exhibition Scirocco - Arifi: Where the Sand Meets the Sea comes full circle to posit that all material holds the ability to create social change.

PHOTOS:  Jonas Mueller-Ahlheim
Iris photo: Frank Geiser

full press release

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(Un) Named Rider, Gallop, Reanimated, 2023
two seménotypes on Hanhmeule Baryta Photo Rag
16 x 20 in 40.64 x 50.8 cm (unframed)
19.5 x 23.5 in 49.53 x 58.42 cm (framed)
Unique

1492: A New World View, 2023
Olive oil soap, mason jar, ash, monitor with animation
​50.5 x 25 in
128.27 x 63.5 cm
Unique

Elliptical Drawing I (in the form of abed spring), 2023
​lint, palm oil, resin
19 x 15.5 in
48.26 x 39.37 cm

Waveform I With Disappearing Horizon Line, 2023
​lint, indigo hue house paint, resin
23 x 75 in
58.42 x 190.5 cm

Waveform II With Disappearing Horizon Line, 2023
​lint, indigo hue house paint, resin
23 x 75 in
58.42 x 190.5 cm

Connective Tissue (Two Loops and A Knot), 2023
constructed lint rope
247 in of rope, 50 x 60 x 40 in
627.38 cm of rope, 127 x 152.4 x 101.6 cm

Window-Pain, 2023
diptych, pigment prints
25 x 17.5 in (each)
63.5 x 44.45 cm (each)
Edition 2/4

Locomotion III, A Documentation of Labored Upon Residual Processes, 2023
pigment print
28 x 42 in
71.12 x 106.68 cm
Edition 2/4

Iris, 2023
​ash infused glass
7.5 x 7.5 x 2 in
19.05 x 19.05 x 5.08 cm

Locomotion I, A Documentation of Labored Upon Residual Processes, 2023
pigment print
30 x 45 in
76.2 x 88.9 cm
Edition 2/4

Veillance, A Documentation of Simply Being, 2023
pigment print
33 x 43 in
83.82 x 109.22 cm
Edition 2/4

Elliptical Drawing II (in the form of two incomplete loops), 2023
lint, palm oil, resin
80 x 6 in
203.2 x 15.24 cm