4UBU
Virtual Exhibition

NEW ART EXCHANGE
39-41 Gregory Boulevard, Nottingham, NG7 6BE, UK

4UBU is a comfy, safe and relaxing space for different types of communities to develop ideas with each other and the NAE team. A space for 'us' to slow down and get to know each other, and interact with visual arts, books, film/moving image and music generously developed by Black folks.

4UBU is using NAE's Main Gallery space, often reserved for internationally renowned artists, as an informal space for play, learning, community activity, and two artist residencies that will have access to an artist studio in the gallery itself. A space where families, elders, young people, and those local to the area can feel welcomed, and for artists and creatives who may or may not work within the usual parameters of a contemporary art gallery setting.

The title 4UBU is purposefully non-specific, 'U' could stand for 'You' or 'Us'. This translates to a universally open space. Yes, this is a platform to express the joys of Black life in multiple forms and allows all members of the "Black community" in all of its intersections to share openly in a safe and unified space, but it is also a place for people of colour and White individuals to be a part of too.

For some of the team, 4UBU was about de-institutionalising themselves as cultural workers, and going through a more nuanced process of learning when it comes to thinking about 'Black communities' as something that is rooted within but isn't solely bound by race or Blackness. 4UBU is a process and not an exhibition nor a project. It is about community building, reclamation, redistribution of power in the organisation, and celebrating Black life.

The Main Gallery space will have two active artist studios for our artists-in-residence - Mac Collins and Sofia Yala, a resource area which will include books and films on monitors, as well as an interactive drawing area for all to join, enjoy and reclaim the space. The space will be hosting several of our Public Programmes of events.

For Us, by Us.

Without such space, we would not survive. Our living depends on our ability to conceptualise alternatives, often improvised, theorising this experience aesthetically, critically is an agenda for radical cultural practice.

bell hooks, 
Choosing the margins as a space for radical openness, 1989.

Find out more: nae.org.uk
From 14th August 2021 to 9th October 2021

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