50 GOLDBORNE GALLERY
[London, UK, 2016]
Wood sculptures / Black card-stock on watercolor paper collages
“Not My Business”
“Not My Business" is named after a poem by Nigerian poet, dramatist, and literary critic, Niyi Osundare. These small scale sculptures loosely reference the poem's thematic purpose and reflect on the fact that at the time of their making, I had not been back to Nigeria since I was a small child. In this way, the title also interrogates the propriety of my "speaking" on matters pertaining to a home I had not yet returned to.
I draw on old and current news from Nigeria, private family photographs, and my imperfect memories to conceive of these Follies, referring to a Derridean "No longer and Not Yet Time" in which the specter of Modernism haunts the informal fabric of the urban landscape. Using rigorous Cubist geometric shapes, I freely juxtapose recognizable icons of the informal economy- from street vendors, oil barrels and power generators -- with those of the post-colonial Utopian state and social infrastructure-- to create strange constructions in which time and space collide ambiguously.
INSTALLATION
MAQUETTES
HAND-CUT COLLAGES
30"x22"
