Saudade Toxossi
Saudade Toxosi is a multidisciplinary artist and image curator working in painting, charcoal drawings, photography, mixed media, sound design and assemblage. For more than two decades, Toxosi has engaged in a meditative curatorial process of selecting and organizing found images that explore and articulate her thoughts about the “New Indigenous African” experience in the United States as well as all people of color around the world. These image pairings through her prevailing curatorial project Equinox 1600 have garnered attention from artists, filmmakers and cinematographers and have informed some of the most important visual and narrative statements of our time notably “Kahlil Joseph’s “Lemonade” 2016, "Fly Paper" 2017, and Arthur Jafa’s "Love is the Message and the Message is Death" 2016 where Toxosi worked directly with the filmmakers. In 2018 Saudade presented her own film entitled “Oyeku” which was featured alongside Henry Davis, Faith Childs- Davis, Arthur Jafa, Michelle Blade and Karon Davis as part of Kahlil Joseph's solo exhibition "New Suns" at Bonnefantenmuseum in Maastricht, Netherlands. By working alongside these directors Saudade has been personally requested aid in visual research for Eliot Rausch’s “The Moment After” 2018, Eliot Rausch’s “The Moment After” 2018, Jake and Royko “Desert” 2018, Jasmine Green :”Bad Habits” 2019, Matilda Finn’s” Today” 2020, Arthur Jafa’s “Wash Us in the Blood”2020 and “Black History —Written By”, Bradford Young 2021. Toxosi is the contributing photography for Lillian Blades visual installation and permanent collection for the Mckinsey Firm, for the Beltline in Atlanta, GA 2020. She is contributing photographer for Cara Judea Alhadeff PHD “Mask Compliance” 2020 and Still photographer for Danielle Deadwyler’s “CHOR(e)S”2019 which, won the Official jury selection in Atlanta, New Orleans and North Carolina Film Festivals. With her array of tools Toxosi crafted two digital collages one that supported Darius James’s satire “Obama Bubbles”and produced two written works and digital collage with About00Time , South Africa 2020. Toxosi’s work has been featured on TNE”s Global Podcast in 2019 and Black Contemporary Art website onTumblr 2012 and has contributed to the visual aesthetic of the New York-based Liberator Magazine, in 2010-2011. In July 2011, singer Rahsaan Patterson commissioned five original artworks that accompanied his album titled “Bleuphoria”.Toxosi has also supported Saiah Arts International by creating two installations for the theatrical experience of Rua Wulf in 2011 at the GoatFarm inAtlanta.She has exhibited and sold paintings in Havana, Cuba “Internationalist Spirit” 2019, as well as exhibited and sold paintings and drawings through Hammond House Museum and Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts and Sciences in Atlanta, Georgia. In the summer of 2020 saudade was awarded a distinguished fellow award from Hambidge as well as receiving grantee award as a BetterSelves Fellow at Knoll Farms in Vermont. Also, in 2020 Toxosi had lectured at the University of California in support of the advanced photography class expressing the symbology within her film and installation Oyeku. In 2009, she visually collaborated with Muthawit Orchestra (aka urbalt) supporting live performances at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York. Saudade has two forthcoming book illustrations from her 2009 short stories entitled “Sunflowers” published in Mythium Literary Journal and “A road to oponri and the gift of power” published in Magi" expected in 2020-2022.