Through the Furnace of Adversity…

In a just-concluded solo exhibition at the National Museum in Onikan, Lagos, Bolaji Ogunwo highlights the gains of the pandemic lockdown period. Okechukwu Uwaezuoke reports 

Tales of distress simmer beneath these paintings’ colourful, pixilated images. And even despite the artist’s skillful efforts at coating them with a veneer of painterly flourish, their lurking storylines still erupt in the viewer’s consciousness, dredging up recollections of their stark dreadfulness. Shouldn’t this be one good reason why Bolaji Ogunwo’s just-completed solo exhibition, Terra Firma, deserves special mention among the many recent exhibitions in Lagos’ dynamic art scene?

Held at the National Museum in Onikan, Lagos, from Sunday, July 16 to Saturday, July 22, this University of Lagos lecturer’s sixth solo outing featured 20 oil and acrylic paintings, which are visual narratives of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown of recent memory. True, the pandemic lockdown period may have exposed some human potential for resilience. It still remains, to many discerning ones, the modern-day equivalent of the biblical handwriting on the wall for an erring humanity and, maybe, a dress rehearsal before the final blows of the Divine Judgement begin to descend inexorably.

Against this backdrop, Ogunwo’s emphasis on the gains of the lockdown period begins to make sense to the viewer, who, while standing on the solid ground—or the terra firma—of his unique experiences, is able to sift them from the many sad tales of misery. Hence, not even the artist’s allusion to that event as “a big tragedy” diminishes the fact that more capacity to cope with adversity was gained.

Talking about these gains, the artist readily cites his attendance at virtual meetings in three geographically dispersed locations in one day from the comfort of his home as a case in point. Is it surprising, therefore, that this optimism reverberates in the titles of such oil on canvas paintings as “Solid Ground” 2022, “In Christ Alone” 2023, “Songs of Freedom” 2023, “Beatitude” 2022, and the triptych “Momemtum” 2023, as well as the acrylic on canvas offerings as “New Ground” 2024, “Higher Ground” 2023, and “Joy in the Morning” 2023, among others?

Besides, if certain qualities about these paintings seem to strike a familiar chord in the viewer’s mind, it would probably be because they are extensions of Ogunwo’s prior explorations of similar techniques. It is as though the 2020 Delta State University, Abraka doctorate degree holder seems to have found his painterly niche—perhaps a comfort zone—somewhere between abstraction and Impressionism.

Evoking the illusion of movement, the ensemble of colourful component units of the paintings inevitably resolve into some sort of visual coherence, thus stimulating the viewer’s conjecture-prone fantasies. Take the oil on canvas painting “The More We Look” or its acrylic on canvas kindred “The More We See”, whose titles already seem to urge the viewer to look beyond the obvious, for instance. The subtlety of the contrast between the brighter and the more sombre-hued colours in them leaves the impression that figures, whose faces loom from the haze of colours, are engaged in a conversation with unseen interlocutors.

Actually, a combination of the titles of both paintings casts the multiple award-winning artist in the mould of a die-hard optimist. For rather than echoing the time-worn aphorism “the more you look, the less you see”, he offers the more upbeat option “the more we look, the more we see.” The artist, obviously, would prefer to summarise his experiences at the time in happier terms than lament the depressing state of the world now. 

The suffusion of brilliant colours in the exhibition’s offerings organically stretches their message beyond the viewer’s expectations. Already, by way of caution, Ogunwo in his artist statement enjoins his audience not to consider the “formal descriptors” as a “technical guardrail” or “aesthetic lens” through which they can evaluate the body of work. This leaves, at the viewers’ command, a wide range of possibilities to mull over. “Rather, they are terms that variously capture my preoccupation with the recent past, and the tainted imagery I am trying to espouse through the everyday relatable subjects,” he explains. “These subjects underscore my response to the recent realities and convey a canon of meanings beyond what they may be ordinarily associated with.”

Thus, the offerings of the exhibition, even when the artist affirms that they are all about the COVID-19 lockdown narrative, do not entirely renounce ties with current realities. Indeed, while they may not have expressed themselves as jeremiads, their titles stamp them as suited for these distressing times. After all, the spectre of these woes, which he associates with that period, such as job losses and the deaths of loved ones, still haunts the today’s world.

Somehow, Ogunwo has managed to direct his audience’s gaze beyond the scourge of the pandemic and the terrors of insecurity to their inherent lessons. His statement—“We went through the furnace of the pandemic, but we gain more capacity when we go through the furnace of adversity”—effectively extinguished all reasons to dwell on the negatives.