Artsdiscourse

Oghagbon Moses, "Collective effort 2", oil on canvas, 2018.  Mathew B. Oyedele In December 2018, Weave and Co. gallery held an art exhibition of paintings by Oghagbon Moses, a Nigerian painter and photographer whose passion for Nigerian cultural landscape remains evergreen. The show was themed "Colours of Uhola". Uhola is an annual cultural festival of the people of Zuru, Kebbi state, Nigeria, meant to appreciate God for abundant harvest. And, Oghagbon, with dexterity and meticulousness, captures the colours, actions, movements and gestures of the festival. Within the context of the exhibition, Oghagbon delineates culture as the chord that connects the people of Zuru. He therefore depicts the people as embodiments and custodians of culture. Paintings like "collective effort","experience" and "the way we are" attests to this fact. Oghagbon Moses, "The way we are 2", oil on canvas, 2018. The struggles, growth an...

Ato Arinze, "Debacle; Aso Rock Mask; The IBB Years" 1994. Mathew B. Oyedele The cliche that art is the mirror of the society remains true in the work of Ato Arinze entitled, “Debacle; Aso Rock Mask; The IBB Years. Just like Picasso's commentary on the bombing of Guernica, a Basque Country town in northern Spain by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy at the request of the Spanish Nationalists, Ato's "Debacle" is a social commentary on the struggle for democracy in his home country Nigeria. The work is a fibre glass piece whose composition is arranged to emphasize an entrapped man in a web at the upper part of the piece. A huge carrot with a snake at its tail - a metaphor for temptation and treachery - occupies the axis of the work and divide it into halves. The lower part of the piece has the image of a lion in between a buttock, a connotation of astrological sign and the preference for women while batons which connotes military brutality and oppress...