Visual Metaphors in Sola Muyiwa’s Latest Watercolour Series

Yinka Olatunbosun

A nerve-calming view awaits the visitors at Quintessence Gallery, Victoria Island Lagos, where a handful of artists and art connoisseurs gathered for the opening of “A few Minutes After” exhibition. A contemplative series of water colour paintings by Sola Muyiwa, this show presents nature and everyday reality as a documentation of moments. 

Set in the Makoko community where the artist resides, the artist recreates scenes that define the community which has a recent history of displacement by government. 

Makoko, a floating slum in Lagos, Nigeria, is built on stilts over the lagoon. It’s a place where life is inextricably linked to water and human activity. In its fidelity to reality, some of the paintings capture Makoko in all its raw, chaotic beauty, complete with wafting smoke, a scene of vibrant movement and contrasting textures. While documenting this symphony of smoke and light over Makoko, Muyiwa captures a sweeping view of Makoko slum at dusk, sometimes revealing  the interconnected network of wooden shacks perched precariously on stilts over the murky waters of the Lagos Lagoon.

Dark smoke rises from dozens of small cooking fires lit in the kitchens of the shacks. The smoke doesn’t just rise straight up; it billows and swirls, caught by the gentle coastal breeze. It forms ethereal, snake-like patterns that float across the sky, mingling with the last light of the day and creating layers of atmosphere. The light from the setting sun catches the edges of the smoke, giving it a soft, almost translucent quality in places, while leaving other parts dense and brooding.

The overall feeling inside the exhibition halls is one of raw, vibrant humanity, a community thriving amidst challenging conditions, bathed in the soft, melancholic glow of the smoked-filled dusk. 

For the artist, the paintings do not document a place as much as evoke a condition: the fragile continuation that follows interruption. Here, nothing is fixed. Working primarily in atmospheric watercolour, his practice explores the relationship between memory, environment and lived experience through restrained compositions shaped by light, water and movement. Rather than direct documentation, Muyiwa creates impressions moments that hover between observation and recollection. 

In ‘Makoko, From Afar,’ the city exists as a presence rather than destination- visible, recognisable, yet separated by space and stillness.

Seen from within the water rather than outside it, the piece titled ‘The Middle of it’ places the viewer inside atmosphere and movement. Boats drift quietly across an open expanse while settlement dissolves into haze. Distance becomes emotional rather than physical.

In the piece ‘Carrying What Matters,’ a solitary figure moved through water carrying more than an object, carrying necessity, routine and survival. The scene feels quiet yet weighted, suspended between departure and return.

In ‘A Few Minutes After,’ the titular work in this show, water becomes force, interruption and movement. Figures emerge within a moment of uncertainty- suspended between action and aftermath. The work captures energy not as chaos, but as lived experience. 

“The exhibition as a whole explores what happens just after something shifts. The exhibition is not about a single event or place, but about aftermath and the quiet continuation that follows disruption, memory and change. Maroko serves as context rather than subject,” the artist says.