A-ARTs: Ajuyah's digital strokes over conservative Lagos

A section of Jessica Ajuyah's The Shape of Memory solo art exhibition at Terra Kulture, Victoria Island, Lagos.

By Tajudeen Sowole

The Lagos art environment has something to chew, perhaps digest too, in the emerging digital textures on the art appreciation landscape of the city.

Arguably the art hub of West Africa, Lagos, which prides itself in art galleries of mostly three to four decades or more old hardly display works outside the traditional art textures. Going through quite a number of exhibitions across the Lagos central art districts in first quarter of 2026 exposes a shift.

This afternoon of an unscheduled visit, the traditional paintings with oil, acrylic charcoal or their cousins in mixed media on canvas, as well as drawings are conspicuously missing on the walls of one of the galleries. On display are digital paintings by young artist, Jessica Ajuyah, whose works radiate a radical shift from the traditional and conservative textures. More curiously to a visiting connoisseur's observance, the host gallery is Terra Kulture, in Victoria Island, one of the oldest art galleries in the city.

It's a refreshing moment to stumble on Ajuyah's exhibition titled The Shape of Memory at Terra Kulture, more so that the gallery's physical space has changed over the years. From a spacious first floor, in over 20 years, the Terra Kulture gallery has shrunk to a reduced area on the ground space of the over two-decade-old multipurpose culture facility. Currently, the gallery space is back on the top floor, but still in its shrank space of one room.

In contrast, over the past years, the Lagos art appreciation space hasn't shrunk, rather the energies keep growing, and expanding, so suggests the textures of Ajuyah's works on the walls at Terra Kulture gallery. Ajuyah's works on display adds to the new energies of contemporary expressions redefining visual culture of 21st century Lagos. Undoubtedly, splashes of contemporary digital colours – in physical and virtual spaces – keep changing the face of conservative Lagos art scene.

As much as electronically-aided creation of art, especially in painting, has expanded 'escapism', beyond it's thematic meaning, some digital art keep pausing one's pace for attention. Clearly a fresh name on the Lagos art circuit, but Ajuyah brings so much onto the walls in poetic visual languages. More of interest, Ajuyah's digital brushings further explain the inseparable line between art and design. The ever growing debate over art and design may have to capture an artist such as Ajuyah's style and technique to enrich critical view of the subject.

In the context of celebrating the thin line between art and design comes a 2025 dated piece titled Silent Reverie. Ajuyah's application of space between the lady and the capture of a distance sunset, depict the spiritual calmness that exists in nature and humans.

Mounted separately at the entrance of the gallery, near the bookshop end of the reduced space, Ajuyah's Silent Reverie painting exposes the artist's pseudo-symmetric style in deployment of the distance sunset in almost at the eye level of the subject. What an artistic management of space that generates aesthetics blend with spirituality.

'Silent Reverie' (digital, dated 2025) by Jessica Ajuyah.

With a semblance of graphic illustration, and radiating realtime brush movements, Silent Reverie brings into its aesthetics the duality of visual appreciation. The piece escalates the central theme of the exhibition, which is all about celebrating the strength of women.

Some of the other paintings on display, which celebrate the power of digital brushings, also exude the strength of women. Some of such works include Homesick series, which capture women in togetherness; Vibration, a touch of designs in flowering rough brushings; and Chrysalis In Green, state of pregnancy, capturing the bonding between mother and unborn child.

With AI, and whatever lies ahead in the future, artists of traditional convictions would most likely sustain their resilience in paintings and other genres. As the escapism of digital art may not survive the test of 21st century, artists like Ajuyah, perhaps, should strike a balance in future exhibitions. A mix of traditional medium of painting with digital display would have separated her practice from the labeled "escapist artists."

For the Lagos art environment, The Shape of Memory, being a result of juried selection, suggests the texture of the future. With the entry of the digital colours, onto the conservative Lagos art environment, some artists may no longer enjoy the exclusive entitlement mentality of having the mastery of the canvas in traditional medium.

For Ajuyah, certain inconsistent in signatures on her works float between 'By Jessica Ajuyah' and without the 'By'. But in art tradition and parlance, the 'by' is needless. More of her works come with the needless 'By' labels. Perhaps, Ajuyah's inclusion of 'By' in her signature is an innovation, against the established tradition known in art parlance.

Like most artists of digital painting generation, Ajuyah also falls into the incomplete labeling style. The medium of label becomes non explicit with just 'digital painting'. It would have been more detail to add the type of medium on which the digital paintings are printed. Are they printed on canvas or photographic paper, or board?

While the emergence of The Shape of Memory – from many other entries, including traditional medium for the Terra Kulture exhibition – celebrates digital painting, the "escapism" shadow won't disappear so soon. The determinant for the survival of digital painting lies in generational resistance or acceptance shift in art appreciation, among emerging collectors.

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