Modupeola Fadugba Is Exploring Nigeria’s Current Landscape Through Art
ART X Lagos is West Africa’s first international art fair and we at Konbini will be profiling one amazing artist set to exhibit – every Thursday – right up until the fair (which will run from November 3 to November 5).
Born in Togo to Nigerian parents, raised in the US and Rwanda for most of her childhood and then moved to the UK to complete her education, 32-year-old multi-media artist Modupeola Fadugba has a very deep well of culture to pull from and it shows in her art.
Most of Modupeola’s work finds her juxtaposing her experiences in developed countries like the US and UK, where she was primarily raised and educated, with developing countries like Togo and Nigeria, where she is from.
With her most recent and acclaimed body of work, Like Play Like Play, Modupeola explores playing – from swimming to tossing coins – as a form of resistance to the suppression of freedom of expression and other forms of control.
About what she hopes to achieve with her art, Modupeola said on her website:
“I am interested in deconstructing charged hierarchical relationships within the Nigerian context: men and women, government and citizens, group action and personal responsibility.
I intend to engage my audience in a dialogue about Nigeria’s current social and political landscape, and perhaps incite both individual and collective change.”
Speaking about how she discovered her love for art, Modupeola said:
“I think it was while I was in secondary school in the UK that it started. My school really encouraged us to take art very seriously.
I always had an interest but then I began to conduct these very large-scale projects by myself at the age of 11 or 12.
But I was also very interested in and good at science subjects. It was the stubborness in me that was like: ‘I’m a woman: Why be an artist when I can be a chemical engineer?’”
You can learn more about her work on her website or see it in person at ART X Lagos..
To learn more about ART X Lagos you can visit their website. You can also discover a bunch of other artists who will be exhibiting at the fair alongside Modupeola, like the talented Kainebi Osahenye. Watch his interview below:
