Viewing Karimah Ashadu: Tendered

Karimah Ashadu’s Tendered at Camden Art Centre is a landmark exhibition and the artist’s first institutional solo show in the UK, running until 22 March 2026. It presents a compelling survey of her moving-image practice and expands her investigation into labour, masculinity, autonomy and socio-economic structures against the backdrop of West African life.

At the heart of the exhibition is MUSCLE (2025), a newly commissioned single-channel moving-image work that premiered here. This intimate portrait focuses on bodybuilders in the slums of Lagos as they pursue the hyper-masculine ideal, wrestling not only with their own physicality but also with broader questions of individual authority, economic aspiration and patriarchal expectations. Accompanied by new sculptural pieces referencing the film’s environments and objects, MUSCLE anchors a cinematic exploration of how bodies become sites of labour, identity and self-construction.

Curated by Alessandro Rabottini and Leonardo Bigazzi of Fondazione In Between Art Film, Tendered situates Ashadu’s work within a broader discourse on post-coloniality, labour and cinematic form, defying documentary conventions through a lyrical, painterly lens. Her films emphasise composition, colour and rhythm, drawing on her background in painting to challenge colonial optics and to highlight the complex interplay of subjectivity, performance and social structures.