In Conversation: Karimah Ashadu with Chrissie Iles
Saturday, May 10, 2025, 4pmOn the occasion of artist Karimah Ashadu’s first institutional solo exhibition in New York and the U.S. debut of the Silver Lion-awarded film Machine Boys (on view at Canal Projects May 9 – July 26 2025), please join us for a conversation between artist Karimah Ashadu and Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art Chrissie Iles on May 10th at 4pm at Canal Projects. The conversation will reflect on the themes of the film, with an emphasis on Ashadu’s filmmaking process and approach to camera-work.
Chrissie Iles is the Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Her curatorial focus is contemporary art and the moving image from a global perspective. Her curated exhibitions include major thematic exhibitions of the moving image: ‘Signs of the Times: British Film, Video and Slide Installation in the 1980s’, ‘Into the light: The Projected Image in American Art 1964-1977’ and ‘Dreamlands: Immersive Cinema and Art 1910-2016’. She has curated a number of survey shows including Sharon Hayes, Louise Bourgeois and Dan Graham, and co-curated three Whitney Biennials, 2004, 2006, and the 2024 Whitney Biennial: Even Better Than the Real Thing’. She builds the moving image art collection at the Whitney Museum, and publishes widely. She is a member of the Graduate Committee at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, and a faculty member of the Curatorial Course at the School of Visual Arts, New York.
Karimah Ashadu is a British-born Nigerian Artist and Film Director living and working between Hamburg and Lagos. Ashadu’s practice is concerned with labour, patriarchy and notions of independence pertaining to the socio-economic and socio-cultural context of Nigeria and its diaspora. Her work has been exhibited and screened at institutions internationally, including the 60th Venice Biennale, where she was awarded the Silver Lion for a Promising Young Participant in the International Exhibition. Her work has been shown at Kunsthalle Bremen, Tate Modern, London, Secession, Vienna, Kunstverein in Hamburg, South London Gallery, London, Museum of Modern Art, New York and Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève. Upcoming exhibitions include Camden Arts Centre in London.
Ashadu is the recipient of other awards such as the Prize of the Bötterstraße in Bremen (2022) and the ars viva prize (2020). Public collections include MoMA, the City of Geneva Contemporary Art Collection and the Federal Collection of Contemporary Art, Germany. Fellowships include the Abigail R. Cohen fellowship at the Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination, Paris. In 2020, Ashadu established her film production company Golddust by Ashadu, specialising in Artists’ films on black culture and African discourses.
