At Terrakulture, young artists seek new identities

Three assertive young artists recently embarked upon a search for new cultural and artistic identities. The artists also participated in an exhibition titled, Idanimo: Leaders of the new school volume 1 and held in Lagos a few days ago.

The three artists are Promise O’Nali, Dipo Doherty and Ayobola Kekere-Ekun. Apart from the fact that they are relatively young, they have something in common, which is the determination to be self-dependent and to make a decent living by using every available medium around them without having to sit around in offices and work for somebody else.

The artists also have a common goal, in a sense that they all desire to influence the youth, through their works, to start thinking of themselves as key players in the general quest for social re-orientation. “The most important thing is being aware of who we are and of the fact that we can also change the environment or society without having to wait for anybody to tell us what to do, ”O’Nali told our correspondent.

Explaining the objective of the exhibition, Oba Osoba, who was the curator of the event, said, “We are basically trying to celebrate our cultural and personal identities. At the same, we are trying to encourage people to develop their individual identities and possibly, use that as a tool for change.”

The exhibition highlighted the primary goal of the LMC, which is to promote visual arts across all the departments of the Nigerian society.  “Nigerians, especially residents of Lagos, are very artistic people. We hope that with the cutting edge techniques that people are bringing into the art space in the city, more artists will begin to create new art forms and processes. We feel that there are many ways in which things can be done differently to bring about the desired change in the society,” Osoba added.

Describing the exhibition as the product of the drive to expand the market for Nigerian art works beyond the country’s borders and to attract patronage from more foreign art collectors interested in cultural products from this part of the world, he said, “Our culture is exportable and it is important that we realise this. We package it, we make it new everyday and let people pay for it.”

Most of the works, especially paintings, were executed with acrylic on canvas – from O’Nali’s thought-provoking Ella’s dream pod to Doherty’s intricate drawing titled, Summer rhythms and Kekere-Ekun’s dazzling Blossom, bubbles and buttercup.

For O’Nali, whose personal belief in the triumph of the mind over matter clearly resonates in most of his works, Idanimo provided an opportunity to showcase his works to a more critical audience outside his native Niger Delta.

In Ella’s dream pod, which depicts an imaginary single mother, who is absorbed in a struggle to survive the hard times against all odds,  for example, the artist explores the depth and power of the human imagination, as well as how it can be manipulated to achieve positive goals.

Similarly, Kekere-Ekun examines how the Nigerian society relates to the culture’s conflicting constructs in her work, Blossom, bubbles and buttercups.

Source: Punch