With Flux, Five Artists Interrogate the Fluidity of Human Experience

Yinka Olatunbosun

Contemporary art lovers in Lagos are shifting their attention to Ikota as a group exhibition, FLUX, unleashes a collection of works of five artists for its grand opening on September 26th at ArkHive by Creath. The showcase which runs till October 17th assembles emerging and established contemporary artists whose works explore the fluid nature of identity, urban transformation, and the evolving socio-cultural landscape of modern Nigeria.

Organised by Creath, a creative platform known for pioneering tech-forward art spaces and creative infrastructure, the exhibition utilises the multi-dimensional gallery environment at ArkHive. Located in the bustling commercial hub of Ikota along the Lekki-Epe Expressway, Lagos, ArkHive provides a sleek backdrop designed to foster immersion and reflection.

The central theme, FLUX, takes inspiration from continuous change and motion. Through a wide selection of mediums—including textured canvas paintings, mixed-media, digital installations, and experimental photography—the participating artists interrogate how personal and collective narratives shift over time. Visitors will encounter pieces that bridge traditional African motifs with contemporary digital aesthetics, reflecting the dual realities of living in a rapidly digitizing metropolis like Lagos.

Rather than standing as static objects, the works by Oshorenoya David Francis, Wilson Chukwuka Clifford, Gift Osague, Bola Obatuyi and Ayela-Uwangue Nosawema presented in FLUX invite viewers to consider their own roles within an ever-shifting environment. The exhibition also highlights Creath’s ongoing mission to blend artistic expression with technological innovation, expanding accessibility for collectors, art patrons, and first-time gallery visitors alike.

FLUX uncovers the sensibilities of immigration, cultural displacement, and the vulnerability of self-discovery. This group exhibition traces how identity, memory, and the material world is shaped by perennial change.

According to the curator, Ezenweze Esther Adaeze, “FLUX translates to evolution, transition, or concurrent movement. It creates a symbiotic connection between a phase of transformation and the malleability of its final form. FLUX represents the voyage of becoming: a motion from sensation to sentimentality, the impermanence of identity: and the psychology of growth.”

Wilson Chukwuka outlines the psychological interiors of a self in perpetual emotional motion, deploying repetitive marks that suggest thoughts rewriting themselves in real time. Gift Osague reconfigures discarded fabric materials that have already lived into new figurative meaning, showing flux at the level of matter itself.

Bola Obatuyi’s work shifts definitions of femininity, assembling women who refuse to hold still within the images society makes of them. Ayela-Uwangue Nosawema’s work shows the flux of human vulnerability, capturing figures who carry a restless presence.

“His paintings reveal how much of ourselves we hide and how much of the human interior remains just beyond what the world is ready to receive,” says the curator.

Ultimately, Francis Oshorenoya captures the solitude of becoming: a flux of the immigrant experience tracing the quiet space in between worlds. His works show an ongoing journey defined by vulnerability, self-discovery, and the courage it takes to truly confront oneself.

Together, these five voices compose a conversation about the African experience in contemporary life: its histories, migration, emotional transformations, and its refusal to be fixed in a single place. FLUX offers the generative uncertainty of being alive in a time of profound change and the courage to create art from within it.

Osague, a Nigeria contemporary visual artist from Benin, Edo State began her artistic journey at the age of nine and graduated with a Higher National Diploma as a painter from the prestigious School of Art and Industrial Design, Auchi Polytechnic, Auchi, in 2021. Currently based in Lagos, Nigeria, she works full-time as a studio artist who takes pride in repurposing discarded materials into fabric collage art. Her unique approach involves repurposing discarded fabrics such as cotton, silk, tulle, and wax, transforming them into intricate, thought-provoking pieces.

Obatuyi, born in Ibadan, obtained a Higher National Diploma (HND) in Fine Arts from Auchi Polytechnic, Edo State, Nigeria in 2015/2017. She brings her canvases to life using fabric and acrylic paint. Her work intercepts body positivity, sisterhood and defiance towards socially constructed notions around what it means to be female such as the misconception that physical attractiveness is the most important aspect of being a woman. Clifford is a multidisciplinary contemporary painter, who shows versatility in mediums and expressions ranging from impressionist stroke with the palate knife to vibrant brushstrokes with acrylics. He works using repetitive symbols, motifs and patterns that eventually birth a unique Art piece. His journey with pigment tubes and other mediums began in 2017 and since then he has been exploring new techniques to better render his concepts.

Nosawema is a multimedia artist whose practice centres on the emotional and psychological dimensions of the human condition.Working across acrylic,oil,spray paint,charcoal,crayon,and found materials, Nosawema constructs layered pictorial spaces in which abstraction and figuration coexist. His compositions are marked by muted palettes, expressive mark-making,and nuanced handling of light and shadow, shaping atmospheres of introspection and psychological depth.

Francis is a Nigerian-born artist based in the United Kingdom whose practice explores solitude, transformation, and the evolving process of becoming. Francis obtained a master’s degree in Contemporary Art Practice from De Montfort University, Leicester, United Kingdom. Working primarily with mixed media on paper and canvas, Francis creates deeply introspective paintings and drawings that examine solitude, inner desire, fantasy, identity and self-discovery.