The Ease of Fiction presents the work of four African artists living in the United States as the foundation of a critical discussion about history, fact, and fiction. The artists — ruby onyinyechi amanze (b. 1982, Nigeria), Sherin Guirguis (b. 1974, Egypt), Meleko Mokgosi (b. 1981, Botswana), and Duhirwe Rushemeza (b. 1977, Rwanda) — present recent paintings, drawings, and sculptural works that explore issues of cultural identity, personal agency, historical truth, and collective memory.

The exhibition's title evokes the idea that people are often more comfortable accepting or believing what is told to them by those in power, rather than challenging and investigating the authenticity of information presented as historical fact. Interweaving their personal experiences and memories into broader historical contexts, these artists create work that counteracts passive acceptance by generating new, hybrid realities. Mokgosi's Democratic Intuition, Exordium deals with the concepts of education and labor in relation to people's access to and the practice of democracy, while amanze's kindred questions storytelling and the ways in which our own recollections can be faulty. Sherin Guirguis's abstract doorways, windows, and arches explore cultural identity and women’s agency, and Rushemeza's weathered surfaces remind us that the past remains continually relevant.

The artists' cultural backgrounds, as well as geographic diversity, create an opportunity for a provocative examination of varied perspectives of reality. The works in The Ease of Fiction challenge and test the notion of a single historical truth in order to reveal how the "powerful" construct historical accounts in order to perpetuate their political and economic dominance. The primary tool that these artists select for this task is the strategy of constructing parafictions — works in which fictions are presented as facts. To invent a fiction is, in essence, to invent a space in which it becomes possible to live amidst the confusion and complexities of reality; a fiction allows us to remake the political and social systems that govern this imagined territory, holding out the revolutionary promise of changing both our selves and the web of social relations that make us significant.

This exhibition was organized by the Contemporary Art Museum Raleigh | CAM Raleigh and curated by independent curator Dexter Wimberly. CAAM’s presentation was organized by Mar Hollingsworth, Visual Arts Curator and Program Manager.

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