The Break, The Wake, The Hold, The Breath explores the coded language of Black culture. Nigerian artist Abraham Oghobase, along with Canadian raised Trinidadian-Nigerian artist Jamilah Malika Abu-Bakare are in dialogue with archival records of Black subjectivity. Using photography, video, text and sound both artists use a fugitive language—verbal, visual and gestural—to express acts of refusal and exultation in relation to experiences of the Black diaspora to claim agency for the Black body. Their work highlights an inherent form of agency practiced within sites of control. The exhibition makes visible a lineage of refusal and a celebration of sovereignty over one’s body within the colonial state. The artists manifest corporeal knowledge held in tensed muscle, the hum of the voice, and the resonant qualities of image making that have travelled through generations, across oceans and by land, which are deeply felt within African and diasporic peoples.