Art is rarely only about beauty. A new exhibition at the Visual Arts Centre in Clarington, Ontario stresses that art is also about memory, gender, power and resistance.

 

“We Have the Cure” is a striking multi-media exhibition by Nigerian-Canadian artist, economist and food expert Kosisochukwu Nnebe. It demonstrates the intersection of history, the present, aesthetics and survival.

 

Cassava, a food staple in the Caribbean, South America and Nigeria plays a starring role.

 

 

At first encounter, the exhibition reads as an inventive collection of installations made from textile, glass, video, and photography. Yet, as viewers move through the space, the deeper political logic of the work is revealed.

 

In one area, images of Caribbean women (Indigenous Taino women from Jamaica and descendants of enslaved Africans) are transferred onto fabric using indigo and cassava in an Adire-inspired process. The textiles are visually lush, their blues and patterns evoking beauty and tradition. But Adire here is not merely decorative. Historically, such textiles were created and worn by Nigerian women who organized, resisted, and led revolts against colonial rule in the early twentieth century.

 

In another area, the gallery transforms into a glamorous modern-day nail salon where glass sculptures of hands and long fingernails glisten like weapons – a reminder to the viewer that the cyanide from cassava was sometimes carried under women’s thumbnails to poison brutal slave owners.

 

Nnebe describes these works as “apothecary and armoury,” a phrase that captures how care and violence, survival and resistance, coexist in women’s hands.

 

The show runs till June 2, 2026.