Dance Will Be You
24 January – 20 March 2025
Efiɛ Gallery, Dubai, United Arab Emirates







Installation View
Magdalena Campos-Pons (Cuba)
J.K. Bruce-Vanderpuije (British Accra, Gold Coast [Now Ghana])
Dina Nur Satti (Sudan/Somalia)
Myles Igwebuike (Nigeria/USA)
‘We be a mirrored/ storm, / a night of soul’s fire/ dancing’ —Sonia Sanchez, We a BaddDDD People (1970)
Dance Will Be You is a dialogue with artists practicing art as an act of transcendence, devotion, and freedom, collectively offering a presentation of nuanced explorations into the symbolic and performative dimensions of contemporary African art. At the core of their works lies the notion of multiplicity, where the self is/ becomes everything, everywhere—between the physical and fictional, tangible and intangible, the within, around, and beyond.
Borrowing its title from Sonia Sanchez’s We a BaddDDD People (1970), the exhibition echoes her reflections on transformative expression and unity. The title reflects the rhythmic and dynamic essence of Sanchez’s poetry, where movement becomes both a metaphor and a call—a dance that embodies the multiplicity of forms, states of being, and expressions.
Watercolor, gouache, and ink blend into one another in Interstellar, a triptych by María Magdalena Campos-Pons composed of three panels, where the piece unfolds through a layering of techniques, materials, and processes. In it, Campos-Pons navigates the mysteries and depth of celestial spaces. The process itself becomes a site of multiplicity, where various approaches converge to embody her deep exploration of the divine and the transcendent. This sense of layering extends into her glass work, such as Reservoir for Love #2, where molten glass takes on fluid, abstract forms that interplay with its static qualities and vibrant colors. Campos-Pons’s practice moves fluidly across disciplines, creating bodies of work where materiality becomes a portal for ancestral and cultural reflections. Rooted in this dynamic interplay, Dance Will Be You extends these conversations into broader realms of multiplicity and transcendence.
J.K. Bruce-Vanderpuije’s photographs offer a glimpse into the collective frequencies of ritual and celebration, where gestures of gratitude and remembrance stretch across generations. Liberians in Ghana, dancing and paying homage to the Jamestown stool, Accra, 1960s shows Liberians migrating mid-motion across the image. A raised sword glints in the light, surrounded by a haze of shadow and fog, faintly pausing the surrounding motion. The photograph is part of a selection from Bruce-Vanderpuije’s archive, documenting Liberians who settled in Jamestown, Ghana, for work and became part of the community’s cultural rhythms. Homowo, meaning “hooting at hunger” in the Ga language, frames this durbar—a celebration of resilience, gratitude, and joy. The festival, celebrated by the Ga people of Ghana, commemorates the end of a historic famine, transforming scarcity into abundance through communal rituals, feasting, and dance. Each year, these gatherings reaffirm cultural bonds, connecting communites through shared acts of remembrance.
Dina Nur Satti’s ceramics carry this sense of continuity across historical snapshots, informed by her research into pre-colonial African objects and their enduring significance. Her Lotus Series carries the symbolism of the lotus flower—rooted in the mud yet blooming toward light—into vessels that speak to cycles of transformation and renewal. For Dina, each piece becomes a vessel of intention, where the act of making connects to histories of ritual and the quiet resilience they embody. Like the objects she studies, her practice moves fluidly between the spiritual and the functional, bridging ancient knowledge with contemporary expressions of care and reflection.
From the intimate space of Satti’s vessels, Myles Igwebuike’s ECHICHE bench unfolds as both an offering and a meditation. Drawing from the architectural traditions of Igbo Mbari houses— communal dwelling spaces—ECHICHE bridges the spiritual and the functional. Adorned with carved symbols and motifs derived from Igbo cosmology, ECHICHE materializes Igwebuike’s research into how ancestral practices can inform contemporary design. As a site of contemplation, it embodies a delicate balance between stillness and movement, where echoes of devotion and cosmological thought converge with the present. Igwebuike’s work reimagines the Mbari tradition as a portal, threading past and present through the enduring language of form and space.
Dance Will Be You seeks to invite intentional dwelling. Between layers of history and material, it offers a space to reflect on how influences from the African continent and her diaspora adapt and endure, how they reshape themselves in the present.
The works in the exhibition resist the temptation to resolve or define. Instead, they invite us to move—between forms, between ideas, between worlds. Through the works of Campos-Pons, Bruce-Vanderpuije, Satti, and Igwebuike, we glimpse how multiplicity might guide us to embrace the continuous act of curiosity: as an expansion, a way of being that is infinite and evershifting.