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| Titi Omoighe with some of her paintings during preview |
Whatever makes Titi Omoighe a rarely heard name on the Nigerian art exhibition turf, strangely, seems to have its alluring value. From the academic shell where Omoighe's art has coiled for 17 years as a teacher, the artist comes out to benefit from the current fresh breath of contemporaneity on the Nigerian art landscape.
Omoighe's body
of work, being on displayed as Modern Interpretation at Temple Muse,
Victoria Island, Lagos, brings a missing link between modernism and
contemporary spaces, particularly in
thematic context. Centralised with native
themes and laced in contemporary expression, the exhibition provides a balance
in appropriation of art across generations.
Her art emits innocence such that even if her
name were detached from the paintings, the depth of strokes still radiate
freshness. Showing
till August 30, the exhibition is sponsored by luxury house, Moet Hennessey,.
Omoighe, b
1966, lectures Fine Art at Yaba College of Technology, Lagos. Before joining
the academia, she was a set designer at Nigerian Television Authority (NTA ).
From series of
works inspired by famous mid-20th century classic Yoruba author, D.O. Fagunwa,
to other pieces that highlight cultural similarities between Benin and Yoruba
as well as a communal contents of the peoples, Omoighe's paintings generate
pertinent narratives that make navigation through the past to the present a
crucial part of value recovery.
Flaunting her
impressionistic skill, Omoighe, in one of the works titled Elders Gathering,
implores the power of lighting to emboss seated-figures. More interestingly,
the artist's release of the palette to flow, naturally, adds to the texture of
the canvas despite the work's monochromatic tone.
Strengthening
her diversified colour application is the artist's style in compositonal skill;
so suggests Village Square, an outdoor gathering of people under a huge tree. Though seems
like a high angle view, the emphasis favours the tree, particularly enhañced by
the dark colour over the brightness of the human-populated floor. "We
should revisit gathering of elders more to solve issues," Omoighe advises
during a preview for the exhibition.
As the
exhibition becomes convergence for quite a number of factors in the artist's
journey through her career, the passion for what she notes as native method of
painting gets a space as well. Such comes in The Maidens Dance and
others in similar styles for examples,
as she says, the pieces "remind us about the indigenous way of painting" to generate
contemporary textures.
A bold
expression on canvas derived from being TV studio set designer early in her
career, fuses so much into quite a number of the themes inspired by Fagunwa's
classic adventure novels. Among such paintings
is Akaraogun, a depiction of one of the leading characters in
Fagunwa's book Ogboju Ode Ninu Igbo Irunmale, a 1938 work translated
into English by Wole Soyinka as The
Forest of A Thousand Daemons. Beyond just her interpretation of the
celebrated book in painting, the Fagunwa perspective of Yoruba philosophy,
Omoighe discloses, "aligns with my concept of art creation."
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| Village Square from Titi Omoighe’s Modern Interpretation |
Still on her
training environment, perhaps, the natural and unavoidable influence, no matter
how subtle, is another artist, Mike Omoighe's texture of strokes on one or two
of the exhibiting artist's works. Mike who is also a lecturer at the same
school is her husband. "I emphasis more on forms and using drips,"
she tries to make a clarification. "As a female artist married to an
artist, it has been of mutual suppport to each other despite the
challenges."
With so much to
divulge on canvas and yet revamping her career on the mainstream art scene,
Omoighe is one of those artists whose practise could get art historians and
critics in complex classification.
There is no
doubt that Omoighe is an established artist, who is making a comeback to
recover lost ground. However, she seems to have quite a distance to cover, and
fast too, particularly in a contemporary age.
Perhaps the
first victim of Omoighe's complex identity is the curator of Modern
Interpretation. "Titi has a huge academic following," curator, Sandra
Mbanefo-Obiago notes ahead of the exhibition's opening. But the curator and
director at SMO Contemporar stirs the complexity when she says Omoighe "is
considered as emerging artist."
Avi Wadhwani,
CEO of Temple Muse described her work as "sophisticated and have a global appeal.”
-Tajudeen Sowole
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