By Ogova Ondego
Published May 10, 2014
Anyone who likes engaging in mental games otherwise known as concepts is likely to find this nine-day art exhibition that began on May 8 and runs through May 17, 2014 at Nairobi’s Kuona Trust interesting.
Adeola Olagunju, the Nigerian photographer and artist whose work—Paths and Patterns: Embodiment of the Traveller in the Continuum Paradox—is in focus is on creative residency programme at Kuona Trust Art centre. Though the work appears to be based on the saying ‘Life is a journey’, the artist goes further to explore the contentious concept known as predestination or fate in human life.
That her “diffused consciousness of arts, time and trends has made her a critical, creative, meditative, and passionate artist” comes through in her work at Kuona. Adeola Olagunju, who was born in Ilesa, Osun State, contends that the feet are like a wheel that takes humans on various paths as they journey through life. The feet, she says, “retain the memory of our trails in colour, texture, wrinkle, bruises and scars.”
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Turning to her second concept, Where the Head Leads the Feet, Olagunju argues that “what informs our chosen paths differs from traveller to traveller, though there are catalysts that imparts choices like beliefs, society, faith, tradition, family…’.
In the third and last element of examination, Process and Visual Output, Olagunju keenly observes the feet of people she meets and shares experiences with; “so much amazement to perceive and to also see what our bodies communicate without our knowledge,” she says.
