Taking ‘The First Step’ to Great Expectations 

ARTS & REVIEW

Through their bold visual narratives in a group exhibition in Lagos, 14 young female artists, drawn from four African countries, including Nigeria, regale their audience with offerings that deeply strike a chord, Okechukwu Uwaezuoke reports 

Fourteen young female artists, just by their sheer numbers, should ordinarily pique the interest of both local and international aficionados and collectors. But even more interesting is the fact that the divergent perspectives of these artists from Malawi, Rwanda, Gambia, and Nigeria, who were featured in an exhibition at the Art Pantheon in Oniru, Lagos, have been distilled through the artistic mediums of painting and photography. Indeed, it can also be said that the exhibition, titled The First Step, which ends on Sunday, July 2, lifts the veil on their creative dispositions and idiosyncrasies.

As the first cohort of the Girl Child Art Foundation’s African Female Artist Mentorship Programme (AFAMP), which was organised in collaboration with Art Pantheon Gallery, the artists Akpoghene Caroline Useh, Glory Chisom Ezechukwu, Lawrencia Nnedinso Ozioko, Inioluwa Ruth Akinola, Victoria Erioluwa, Funmilayo Tejumola, Jessicah Ene, Ogonna Onwugaba, Ufuoma Emmanuella Akajere, Ebun Medessou, Sarjo Baldeh, Florence Egboh, Sonayon Thomas, and Temitayo could rightly be described as purveyors of a generational vision. The three-month mentorship programme, which kicked off in December 2022 and ended in February this year, offered glimpses into their creative potential and spawned the offerings in the exhibition. “Their unique voices reveal good narratives that resonate deeply,” enthused the Art Pantheon Gallery’s Nana Sonoiki in her curatorial note.

The Girl Child Art Foundation, or GCAF for short, has a long history of empowering girls through workshops and educational activities. Its most notable recent effort was a series of mural projects in three areas in Lagos and Enugu states targeted at reducing cases of sexual violence. Right from when it was established in 2002, albeit becoming fully operational the following year, the foundation has always had its sights set on combating poverty by providing a platform through which marginalised girls can discover their innate creative talents, cultivate them through art education, and also make a living to sustain themselves. So far, over 3,000 young women have been beneficiaries of their programmes.

With the exhibition The First Step, which follows closely on the heels of its mentorship programme, the GCAF seems to have taken its “artivism” to another level. During the programme, the participants—under the guidance of such esteemed mentors as Desiree Nanuses, Kelani Abass, Aham Ibeleme, and Ibe Ananaba, as well as the expert advisors, Nnenna Okore, Peju Alatise, Uche Okpa-Iroha, Diseye Tantua, June Edmonds, and Victor Ehikhamenor—embarked on a transformative journey, mastering idea generation and technical skills, honing storytelling and presentation skills, learning more about the art world, and discovering the profound impact of their creative expressions.

Ultimately, they poured their hearts and souls into paintings and photos, experimenting with art mediums that spoke to their deepest feelings. The ensuing exhibition, according to the GCAF’s founder, Blessing Onyejike-Ananaba, therefore “unveils the culmination of their artistic odyssey, where unique pieces created with oils, acrylics, mixed media, including embroidery, found objects, and photography, convey the individual narratives of these mentees, touching upon personal, cultural, socio-political, and spiritual themes from a contemporary perspective.”

Besides, there is also the fact that this exhibition’s unique selling point swirls around its exposure of hitherto not-so-well-known young female artists, who, in the words of Sonoiki, “have been traditionally overlooked.” Perhaps it is for this reason that their engagement with many concerns of the human condition appears both daring and unrestrained. 

Consider the work of Lagos-based photographer Ogonna Onwuagba, who is enthusiastic about capturing beauty, texture, and colour in her work. She is influenced by simple, timeless aesthetics and depicts her photographic subjects in her “Born Free” series not just as they are but also as they want to be viewed, influenced by the effects that social media has had on how women look.

Likewise, the lawyer-turned-photographer Ufuoma Emmanuelle Agajere is passionate about visual storytelling and highlighting beauty in people. She aspires to create timeless images for whoever stands in front of her camera, in addition to evoking the emotions captured in each image in her audience. “Hope through Grief,” a 2023 photoprint on lustre paper by the artist, shows a recently widowed woman in what she perceives to be her most vulnerable position.

As for Gambian female sports photographer Sarjo Baldeh, she aims for the perfect shot that captures the emotion and excitement of sports events through her lens. But her photoprint on lustre paper offerings in the exhibition—Selecting the Best Machine to Fix,” “Hard Work Pays,” and “Female Auto Mechanic In Her Workshop—hints at her celebration of the female sex in male-dominated profession.

Meanwhile, the University of Benin-trained, Enugu-based painter Nnedinso Lawrencia Ozioko explores themes of life and health in the human body, its form and shape and its fragility in a series she titled “The Fragility of Life.” This is through a process where she adds  layers of tissue paper exploratively to symbolise fragility on canvas painted with acrylic.

Then there is Akpoghene Caroline Useh, a 2029 Auchi Polytechnic graduate, whose series “All on You” depicts the stages of development from infancy to adolescence, adulthood, and old age by accentuating the viewer’s sense of fantasy through accommodation, drive, willed adaptation, and retirement over time It is particularly in an acrylic on canvas painting titled “Void”, that the Lagos-based full-time studio artist emphasises the importance of mutual accommodation and clueless background criticism, albeit with a relatable level of capacity.

For each of the artists, this exhibition represents not only a significant professional turning point but also possibly serves as a preview of their future aesthetic whims.