By
Tajudeen Sowole
From
a childhood filled with literatures of the Greek and German fairy tales,
photographer Yetunde Ayeni-Babaeko grew up to relish her passion in African
mythologies.
And like story telling from which she
drew her inspiration over the decades, Ayeni-Babaeko, a modeling photo-artist,
is currently interpreting some African mythologies and contemporary themes in a
body of work titled Itan, currently
showing till November 24, 2012 at The Porsche, Victoria Island, Lagos.
Acted and shot in studio, the
interpretations feature characters such as Mami
Water, Osun and others that may
not be so known. Although in the visual arts space where every work hardly
escapes the radar of critique, Itan
seems to have taken a cover in the choice of themes: mythology and folk tales.
She has exploited the freedom of
non-confined interpretations of the characters to a greater extent, and also
created her own versions of the deities. For example, Mami Water widely rendered as a woman with a body of partly fish
and human, is composed differently by Ayeni-Babeko. Her version is a full
human, a lady with brief costumes and holding a snake. The snake, the
photo-artist argued, “symbolizes” the strength of the mermaid. As a piece of
photograph and post-treated in the computer, Mami Water, (C-Print on Di-Bond, 20 x 30 in.) like all the works on
display, passes for an art and adds to the many versions of the images of
mermaids already established.
Still expressing her freedom or license
to create and re-create, Ayeni-Babaeko takes her lens into the Osun waters, depicting the goddess in
what could be contentious. How much of research did she carry out to arrive at
her interpretations rendered in Osun
Goddess I and II? “It’s my
narrative; as an artist I have the right to manipulate.”
Irrespective of the issue her works may
raise, the artist’s identity as a modeling and studio photographer, who hardly
works daylight, remains paramount.
![]() |
Yetunde Ayeni-Babaeko, with some of her works during the opening of the exhibition Itan |
It may be too late for Nigerian
modernity to begin to suspect photography as a part of the art genres,
particularly when Jonathan Adagogo Green had records of good works. However,
the ability of every individual artist, particularly of the new generation, to
truly raise their game to the state of art and add to the strength of
photography, something the older masters have given the genre in Nigeria. For
Ayeni-Babaeko, the great piece of art in Itan
comes in The Pretty Stranger Who Killed
the King-I: the costumes, props and lighting, perhaps some photo-shop works
to achieve SFX, completes a masterpiece in modeling photography as an art. In a
series of three, the first, indeed, propels the other two, which lack the depth
rendered in The Pretty Stranger Who
Killed the King-I.
Quite significant is her choice of
venue, where the works are mounted on dropping strings and almost lost inside
the huge auto sales garage of The Porsche on Akin Adesola Street. It took a few
minutes for one’s vision to adjust and appreciate the blend of class in the
photographer’s works with the glittering state-of-the-art cars surrounding the
works on display. Indeed, the black and white works of Ayeni-Babaeko appear
better suited in the conservative colour-dominated space of The Porsche.
Producing her work in black and white,
perhaps, takes focus from the entertainment value and draws more attention to
the content. And more importantly, the black and white or monochrome, she
argued, makes her work ‘timeless’.
Although just about seven years old in
photography, she is fortunate to experience the pre-digital era, and noted that
despite such wide scopes as photoshop and other soft wares application, “the
creativity still counts”.
As an investment in the future of
photography, she said she was
sharing her experience by giving 12 female photography enthusiasts at the
Goethe Institut, Lagos City Hall, tutorial last year. It was a four-week event,
which had professionals such as Kelechi Amadi-Obi, Lolade Cameron Cole and Leke
Adenuga as resource persons.
Born in Enugu and later
moving to Germany where she encounted photography, Ayeni-Babaeko had her
apprenticeship from 2000 to 2003 at Studio Be in Greven, Germany. In 2004 she
took further study in art and design at Macro-media, Osnabrueck, Germany.
![]() |
Mami-Water, one of Yetunde Ayeni-Babaeko’s works from Itan exhibition. |
She returned to Nigeria in
2005 and in 2007 set up Camara Studio in Ikeja, Lagos, which is currently her
major platform.
Basically,
her message on the mythological themes in Itan
is about tapping from the past. She urged viewers to take another look at
folktales and perhaps learn from them, saying, “It’s true that we go to church,
but there is a part of you that you cannot deny; something in you that is
hiding, that you were brought up with, but within the hustle and bustle of
Lagos, it went into the background”.
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