Claiming Spaces is an exhibition born from a vital necessity: the need to look at ourselves unfiltered, without permission, and without compromise. It brings together exclusively women artists, not as a gratuitous act of protest, but because their perspectives share a common urgency: to reclaim ownership of themselves in a world that constantly questions our legitimacy.

This exhibition explores how women see themselves in a society where their place remains fragile, constantly threatened, negotiable, and reversible. Here, the artworks do not ask permission to exist. They assert themselves. They occupy space, cross it, and transform it. They speak of bodies, identities, inherited silences, and voices silenced for too long.

This theme is not theoretical. It is intimate, lived, embodied. As a Black woman living in Europe, in an interracial relationship, and the mother of mixed-race children, I learned very early on that my place was never a given. I had to justify it, defend it, redefine it. I had to ask for it - repeatedly. In social, professional, familial, and cultural spheres. Always explaining who I was, where I came from, why I was there. Always responding to questioning glances, confining expectations, and overly narrow frameworks.

Today, I no longer ask. I take it.

Claiming Spaces is this gesture. An act of reappropriation. A clear affirmation: we are here, and we will not move. I wanted to bring together artists who understand this deeply, not through words, but through the language of their art. Women who know what it means to exist in the interstices, to navigate between multiple worlds, to carry plural identities without ever being fully accepted by any one.

Their works are sensitive, but never docile. They are poetic, yet permeated by tension. They tell of vulnerability as much as anger, gentleness as much as resistance. They question the way women are perceived, but above all, the way women see themselves when they stop seeing themselves through the lens of others' expectations.

This exhibition doesn't provide definitive answers. It opens up spaces. Spaces for reflection, confrontation, and recognition. Spaces we claim because they have been denied us too often.

Claiming Spaces is not a demand. It is a declaration. Our declaration.

Ohana Nkulufa