The Darkness Climbed in through my Back
Arit Emmanuela Etukudo
Building 305, South Gallery
On View: May 27 – June 6, 2025
Monday – Friday, 11 am – 4 pm and by appointment
Gala opening: May 27th from 3-4:30 pm
Closing reception: June 5th from 3-5 pm
Artist Walkthroughs:
Thursday, June 5th | 3 pm
Centrum is thrilled to announce an installation, The Darkness Climbed in through my Back, by visual artist Arit Emmanuela Etukudo as part of its In the Making residency program. Please join us starting on May 27th to view the work, which will remain on view through June 6, 2025. The artist will also host an informal walkthrough of the installation on June 5th at 3 pm at the start of the Closing Reception.
At its core, Arit Emmanuela Etukudo’s work is a mythology of becoming, a visual and sonic excavation of an existence in formation.
While at Centrum, Etukudo will install The Darkness Climbed in through My Back, a piece within her larger multidisciplinary self-portrait series, I Once Was Held for 1,000 Years. This ongoing body of work explores metamorphosis and the alchemic core of existence as it communes with the fragmented layers of its past, present, and future selves in an act of self-creation. The works follows cycles of fragmentation and re-healing of an existence.
I Once Was Held for 1,000 Years is comprised of experimental moving-image installations that follows a fragmented body (Etukudo) as it holds communion with its subconscious identities in search of wholeness. Inspired by the Agnicayana ritual of recomposing Prajapati’s unstrung body after cosmogenesis, these pieces form sacred and intimate evocations of The Forming Body.
Etukudo’s installation at Centrum will be centered on self-rediscovery and radical imagination. Through prose, soundscapes, and still and moving images, Etukudo will construct a dialogue between these identities, examining the tensions of growth, innocence, and fragmentation. The Darkness Climbed in through My Back specifically delves into the violence of growing pains, the inevitable loss of innocence, and the shadow that forms in its place.
Arit Emmanuela Etukudo (she/her) is a Nigerian-American artist whose practice deals with the fluidity and metamorphosis of Black identity through self-portraiture, moving image, installation, and performance art. Etukudo earned her BA in Cinematic Arts from University of Maryland, Baltimore County and her MFA in Fine Art from Nottingham Trent University. Her accomplishments include the 2024 VCCA Fellowship, the 2023 MacDowell Fellowship, the 2020 Foundation for Contemporary Art Emergency Grant, the 2019 NAE Future Exhibition Prize, and the 2017 Indie Capitol Award for Best Experimental/Animated film. Her work has been exhibited globally at venues like The Peale Museum (Baltimore, MD), New Art Exchange (Nottingham, UK), and Kultur Im Zentrum (Giesse, Germany).