Soto Gallery Set To Host Demola Ogunajo’s Landmark Exhibition “Womb 2 Street”

One of Nigeria’s foremost contemporary artists, Demola Ogunajo, will take centre stage this November as Soto Gallery, Ikoyi, plays host to one of the most anticipated art exhibitions of the year titled “Womb 2 Street.”

The month-long solo exhibition, which opens on November 5 and runs until December 8, 2025, will showcase about 20 rarely seen works by the celebrated painter and conceptual artist, marking a significant moment in his decades-long creative journey.

Known for his ability to fuse pop-art aesthetics with graphic design and illustration, Ogunajo’s work explores the meeting point between the sacred and the everyday. His paintings have long stood out for their sincerity, a quality he proudly describes as his trademark.

Ogunajo’s art is an intersection of the mundane and the mythic, where bumper-sticker slogans collide with celestial battles. In “Womb 2 Street,” viewers are invited into his rich visual universe one filled with angels, Lagos street motifs, Yoruba symbols, and the distinctive irreverence of pop culture.

Drawing from Nigeria’s vibrant visual language: from truck decals to barbershop signs and comic book heroics his works are at once playful and profound, cartoonish yet cosmic, confronting timeless themes of faith, transcendence, divine struggle, and modern absurdity.

At the heart of Ogunajo’s practice is a constant reimagining of identity and belief systems. In this new body of work, he embarks on a deeply personal journey what he calls an exploration of Christ-consciousness delving into the tension between his Yoruba heritage and Christian faith.

“For me, creativity is like a child in the womb,” Ogunajo explained while reflecting on the exhibition’s title. “It’s an autopilot kind of thing, the child doesn’t know, but it’s being nurtured from within. The womb is the ambience that envelopes everything I do.”

That symbolism, he said, represents the nurturing and rebirth that define his creative process — moving from the womb to the street, from inner inspiration to public expression.

One of the pieces in the exhibition, “Stilt Walk and Scorpion,” captures this idea vividly. The colourful painting depicts a man stepping carefully to avoid a scorpion, a metaphor, Ogunajo says, for “how you act towards things that caused you pain or upset you. It is an attitude of carefulness.”

Having studied Fine Art at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Ogunajo has spent over four decades refining his craft. A conceptual artist by definition, he works across multiple media from acrylics to found objects, always allowing each medium to “define itself within the moment.”
“This time around,” he said, “it’s acrylic that I’m showing you.”

“Womb 2 Street” is more than an exhibition he said, it is a bold intervention in contemporary art discourse, challenging the secular biases of the art world while resisting the reduction of spirituality to dogma.

By blending Yoruba visual traditions with Christian iconography, Ogunajo’s work proposes a radical inclusivity in which faith and culture coexist in a dynamic, evolving relationship.

In an era where identity and belief are often politicised, his art offers a transcendent vision: faith as lived experience, tradition as dialogue, and art as fearless testimony.