The Questioned Tomorrow

By the 3rd quater of the year 2011,I submitted a proposal for the National Art competition organised by Nigerian Breweries and African Artists Foundation (AAF) to produce a woek for the theme 'Documenting Changes in Our Nation'. I was shortlisted as a finalist when the list was published. A retreat was organised for the Artists, 12 in number, to come together, interact, and produce individual works. The retreat was held at Abraka Turf and Country Club, Delta State Nigeria from 14th to 21st November, 2011. It was quite a wonderful experience for me to be in a different environment with other Artists of different fields creating wonderful works. For this project, I experimented for the first time incorporating other materials into the photographic body of work, making it look somewhat like an installation.

Some Images from the Retreat...

During my study in the way I’ll like to approach the theme, ‘Documenting Changes in Our Nation’, the more significant area that striked me was the noticeable way the society has been so influenced by religion. It’s not just about the many religious structures we have in every 1 mile, it’s more about the persons being involved..We have not been able to transform these great beauties bestowed upon us to benefit ourselves as a whole in love and sharing. Rather we have used it to differentiate ourselves and further create unexplainable gaps that the future generations would not comprehend. We have not been able to put into practice the same teachings of love each religion claims to teach, what we have seen has been one bloodshed after another. The REAL change we need at this point is a mental change.

"Work in progress"

The Questioned Tomorrow is a body of work that shows the mark religious practices have made on us as a people in our Country; Nigeria. What we claim to practice now leaves a question mark on the sacredness of ‘life’. Through the photographs, I try to make a statement about some characteristic efforts we try to commune with the supreme being and with one another only to find out the next moment that we have destroyed a life, and the next moment we are justifying our actions in respect and obedience to the supreme being. Nigeria’s short life has been packed with successions of various religious battles all over .Receiving news about a recent clash and resulting death of people has become a normal thing for us everyday.
The tape rules and collage of some excerpts from news prints is a fusion and illustrations of happenings over time, which in fact cannot be measured and that is why I sit to wonder, what does tomorrow have for us? What does tomorrow have for the future yet unborn? How do we explain our actions tomorrow? I hope you can journey through the work and give me some answers.


The exhibition...