I Dream I Cross the River in One Stride

Mariane Ibrahim Gallery presents I Dream I Cross the River in One Stride, featuring new work by French artist Clémence Gbonon (b. 1994), alongside Brittney Leeanne Williams and Autumn Wallace. As part of this moment of visibility in the United States, Gbonon will be in residence in Chicago in June 2026 as part the Villa Albertine residency program, further deepening her transatlantic artistic engagement.

The exhibition takes inspiration from Lorraine O’Grady’s seminal essay Olympia’s Maid: Reclaiming Black Female Subjectivity. O’Grady highlights how the Black female body has historically existed as the unseen counterpart to Western ideals of femininity, present as stereotype, absent as subject. In response, these artists assert a self-authored vision of the body: multiple, complex, and unafraid of its own intensity.

Through painting, sculpture, and mixed media, Gbonon, Williams, and Wallace embrace what O’Grady calls a “both/and” space: sensuous yet reflective, wild yet monumental, intimate yet bold, queer yet undefinable. Their works bend, double, withdraw, and sometimes dissolve before the viewer, demonstrating that subjectivity is claimed from within rather than granted externally. Here, the body no longer reflects someone else’s gaze, it defines its own terms of existence.

About Clemence Gbonon

Clémence Gbonon (born 1994, France) lives and works in Paris. She studied at the Beaux-Arts de Paris and at Cooper Union, New York, and graduated in 2024. Her work has been shown at Galerie Mennour in Paris, at the Félicités 2024 of the Beaux-Arts de Paris, at Parfümerie (Frankfurt), FF Projects (Lagos), Cooper Union, and Canada Gallery (New York). Clémence Gbonon is a recipient of the Prix Sarr and the Prix Maurice Colin-Lefranc. She is a resident at POUSH in 2025 and will participate in 2026 in a group exhibition at the MOCO and at the 69th Salon de Montrouge.