Retro Africa Presents Changing Faces

Mary Nnah

“Changing Faces: New Frontiers in Figurative Art”, a solo contemporary art exhibition by Alimi Adewale is set to hold from April 30 to June 25, 2021 at the Retro African Gallery 12 Ukpabi Asika Street, Asokoro Abuja.

Curated by Dolly Kola-Balogun and Ugonna Ibe-Ejiogu, the exhibition will feature paintings, sculptures and installation.

Adewale incorporates his mastery of materiality and process as a response to recent global upheavals which include the world-wide pandemic and protests against state-sanctioned police violence in Nigeria, the United Kingdom, United States, and worldwide.

Spread across the two floors of the gallery, Changing Faces will present newly commissioned, site-specific works consisting of more than 15 large scale impasto paintings and medium to extra-large minimalist and abstract sculptures coated in acrylics, vividly diversified by the inclusion of the rich racial varieties that make up our human constitution.

An installation of works suspended from the ceiling beams adds an ethereal dimension.

Adewale repurposes long-held tenets of European, Modern and Indigenous art into new visions of African figuration.

Drawing upon his courage series, in this new body of work he proposes alternative ways of channelling all peoples into one mind; towards new signifiers of understanding.

Rather than what separates us as individuals, he emphasises our commonwealth as keepers of the human race tasked with unifying a deeply divided world, further fractured by religious differences, income and gender inequalities.

Adewale’s latest solo exhibition at Retro Africa is a timely intervention for our troubled contemporary times, as well as a bold new progression in his commanding oeuvre. Viewing starts at 6:30 pm until 9:30 pm, cocktails and drinks will be served.