anonymous gallery presents grass roots – hinges, an exhibition by Dozie Kanu bringing together film, sculpture, furniture, architecture, and sound through his continued interest in cinema and immersive installation.
The exhibition grows from Kanu’s upbringing in Houston, Texas, and his Nigerian heritage, tracing the principles, customs, and forms through which cultural knowledge passes from one generation to another. Here, inheritance is treated not as a fixed possession, but as something to be looked at closely. What is carried forward, what disappears along the way, what remains unquestioned, and what might still need to be pried open.
Hinges appear throughout the exhibition as both objects and propositions. Drawing from visual forms found within Kanu’s Nigerian heritage, a series of newly fabricated door hinges turns attention toward a small mechanism with an unusually consequential task. A hinge bears weight. It joins one thing to another. It allows something closed to move. Across the exhibition, this simple function becomes a way of acknowledging the various ways in which traditions, beliefs, and forms of knowledge persist, change, or remain held in place.
At the center of the exhibition is Cowboy, a newly produced film with the intimacy and observational quality of documentary. The film follows a young rider competing at the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo, founded in 1984 and recognized as the longest running Black rodeo in the United States. Rather than approaching the rodeo simply as spectacle, Cowboy remains close to the people through whom its culture continues to live. Competition, preparation, repetition, mentorship, and memory become part of a larger portrait of a tradition sustained through the presence and commitment of those who return to it.The film also features Valeria Howard Cunningham, whose leadership within the rodeo has helped carry its history forward across generations.
Cowboy is presented within a purpose built architectural structure alongside sculptural furniture, fabricated hinges, and sound developed by Kanu for the exhibition. Moving between the intimacy of the body, the scale of architecture, and the quiet mechanics of an everyday object, grass roots – hinges brings Kanu’s work with moving image into conversation with his object based practice. The exhibition considers inheritance not only as something received, but as something one eventually has to decide how to carry.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Dozie Kanu (1993, Houston, Texas) is a Nigerian-American artist who currently lives and works in Santarém, Portugal. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) from the School of Visual Arts in New York in 2016 and later participated in the Maumaus Independent Study Program in Lisbon in 2022. Kanu’s practice operates at the intersection of form and function, expanding the space between art and design. Working with reused materials and found objects, he constructs a personal visual language shaped by autobiography, references and the broader material histories of the African diaspora. His sculptures and installations, while resisting fixed categories, frequently draw on utilitarian or domestic structures and exist simultaneously as functional, communicative, and performative objects.
Kanu’s work has been presented in a wide range of exhibition contexts, including galleries and major art institutions. Among his most recent and significant institutional presentations include The Second Shadow. Dozie Kanu Mirroring Marc Camille Chaimowicz, with Shared Echoes and Kindred Spirits at ICA Milan; Cloud Chronicles at the LUMA Foundation in Arles (2025); Supermöbel at the Kölnischer Kunstverein in Cologne (2025); the three-part series Hoi Köln at the Kölnischer Kunstverein (2024); Sommerausstellung at the Fondation Beyeler in Riehen (2024); Conversation Pieces at SFMOMA in San Francisco (2022); Black Atlantic, commissioned by the Public Art Fund for Brooklyn Bridge Park in New York (2022); Enzo Mari, curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, at the Triennale di Milano (2020); Crack Up – Crack Down at the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw (2020); Transformer: A Rebirth of Wonder at 180 The Strand in London (2019); Crack Up – Crack Down at the Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts (2019); and FUNCTION, a solo presentation at the Studio Museum in Harlem in New York (2019).
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS:
Dozie Kanu .