Timi Kakandar: Navigating Identity through Colours

With a rich repertoire of works that explore human nature as well as socio-political issues, the contemporary artist, Timi Kakandar cannot imagine a world without colours as validated in his new solo exhibition at Thought Pyramid Art Centre, Abuja. Yinka Olatunbosun writes.

EXHIBITION
For someone who was born in 1973, a period when most newspapers were printed in monochrome, Timi Kakandar has a strong affinity for colours which has fast become his artistic tool of expressing his perspective of the world on canvas. In this one-week exhibition titled Colour Codes at the Thought Pyramid Art Centre, Abuja, he explores the relationship between colour and identity. Kakandar’s two decades as a practising studio artist has fuelled his fascination with the human form in relation to the challenges, joy and social political issues that emanate from living and working within the African space. He contemplates the problem of identification and its effects in our daily activities.

Undoubtedly, colours as forms of identification had been a subject of conversation in popular music. For instance, classics such as Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder’s Ebony and Ivory, Michael Jackson’s Black or White, Beyoncé and Wizkid’s Black Skin Girl address the differences in skin colour and push for racial harmony. Hence, colour is not just an item in a visual artist’s kit but a powerful conveyor of resounding messages.

Kakandar’s recent body of work in this exhibition celebrates his identity with unrestrained elegance of the human figure. His governance of colour makes it very difficult placing him as a civil engineer. Kakandar is an expressionistic, realistic figurative painter with influences from Fauvism. With this experimental artist, beauty is considered as an essential ingredient in his definition of art.

In “Standing Strong” (2021), “My First Love” (2021) and “Veiled with Love”(2021), the artist appropriates colours alongside African identity, bold faces and more. Timipre Willis Amah, PhD, a photographer, painter and a lecturer at the Department of Fine and Applied Arts, Niger Delta University, Wilberforce Island, Bayelsa State observed that in “Mirror on the Wall” (2021) and “Bold Beautiful, Earth Stron”g (2021), Kakandar presents the African woman with challenges associated with colours.

“The African woman is a reflection of herself, her culture, that relegates her to the background not withstanding her contributions both at home and the society at large,” he noted.

Colour Codes possesses a mastery of proportion and asymmetric compositions; using human morphology as a creative ideology to raise debates on the many progress and drawbacks which form the experiences of humans.

These works are made from coarse-textured oil colours on a support with lines that varies in size and direction. His works are best viewed as paintings that do not just display aesthetics, they commit the viewer into deeper conversations. Since his graduation from University of Port Harcourt, Rivers State in 1999, he has had four solo exhibitions and over 30 group shows with a bulk of his studio works focused on the celebration of human morphology.

For Kakandar, colour is a celebrated medium which when applied in its fluid state becomes a vehicle for the creation of aesthetics. As evident in his paintings, Kakandar has developed an advanced way of using colours in such a way that contrasting hues blend even roughly with each other while maintaining their identity.

“From this engagement, an empathetic relationship is established between the painting and the viewer through the expressions of the figures in his paintings. Only then will the bold splashes of colour on canvas with the iconography they bear, ignite the flame for a new story to be read,” says a critic of his works.

The heterogeneity of meaning in Kakandar’s works on display in this exhibition underscores the fact that forms of creative visual expressions can be recharged to have dual function. Through the fertilisation of patches of colour and dancing lines, and presentation of symbolic forms, he creates visual spectacle to address societal problems.

Women are predominant subjects of his paintings. This may be due to what he considers as the visually alluring complexities in the female physical make up, often complemented by her sensitivity to appearance and aura. The dramatic hairstyles, poise and ornaments make the subjects magnificent and intriguing. Within the allure of these figures are also activities that are linked to them, a woman tending to her baby, another woman earning her wages as a hair stylist. There is another one tying her Gele and possibly preparing for an event or getting set for the day’s work.
• The exhibition runs until Wednesday, June 30.