From Saturday, September 16, to November 5, 2023, Tiwani Contemporary will be host to Wura-Natasha Ogunji’s autumn show, lalala ha! in its Lagos gallery.

The Lagos solo show is a presentation of paintings, drawings and performance, which ebbs, flows and accumulates over time.

Conceptualised as a series of changing vignettes with a non-linear narrative, lalala ha! considers the characteristics of the space as an important presence within the exhibition, with the height of the ceilings, the reverberation of sound, the cool industrial floors, and discreet windows all in dialogue with the works on display.

The show conceptually interrogates memory: It is a form of memoir, embodying ways of being and moving in the city of Lagos, where the artist has primarily lived and worked for the past decade.

According to the artist: “I am deeply interested in how our creative work as artists embodies the forms and poetics of Lagos: the stops and starts of moving through traffic; the choreography of the market; the deep red earth; water all around us; the return of electricity signalled by a fan turning on…A painting moves up the wall with a pulley…We pass images and the images pass us.”

For Ogunji, the space of the imagination and art-making is expansive and liberatory; for lalala ha!, the gallery space becomes a place to speak more fully about, and bring focus to, unique Lagosian gestures, ways of being, thinking and moving in the world.

The artist, who draws inspiration from Édouard Glissant, a French writer, poet, philosopher, and literary critic from Martinique widely recognised as one of the most influential figures in Caribbean thought and Francophone literature, creates a space in the mind eye for a visual interrogation of forms and objects, with the art gallery becoming a site for transforming how people approach and remake this current world: By seeing, by feeling, by knowing that there are other ways of being and making that had not yet been imagined.

The show, as a memoir, reveals the ebb and flow of life, a rupture, a seam, a series of notes and mistakes, the filling and emptying of a space; the multiple versions of lalala ha! are intended to inspire viewers to remembrance, disagreement, and excitement over what was there and where and when.

On A garden of date palms is a drawing inspired by a sketch in one of Ogunji’s father’s dream journals.

After her father passed away, the artist found his dream journals, spanning fifteen years, taking this sketch and reinterpreting it, before overlaying it with stitches and ink.

For Ogunji this piece “acts as a kind of oasis in relation to the other works in the show, as well as to the gallery itself with its high, expansive walls.”

According to the gallery, the show reflects the diversity of Ogunji’s practice from performance to painting, drawing, and embroidered stitches.

The gallery statement reveals thay parallel to these conceptual considerations, “lalala ha! is also an exploration of Ogunji’s own transnational movements, and the ways in which these affect the form of the work she creates. How do paintings cross borders? What is the process of transporting large-scale work from Paris to Lagos? Could folding the linen to fit in a suitcase open up formal possibilities in the painting? Ogunji is interested in ways in which new language rises from transnational quandaries, broadly, and specifically as it informs her work.”

The gallery continues: “The work Two figures standing in an embrace demonstrates the more painterly turn that her drawings have taken in the last few years: While the stitch is still present, Ogunji has explored the painted surface deeply. Yellow is a work made from ink and acrylic on pleated linen, with the pleated folds allowing Ogunji to make two separate, but related paintings.”

The gallery explains: “Viewers are invited to look up, lie down, move about, return and remember, with new work hung within the gallery each week to reconfigure the whole.”

Ogunji holds a B.A. in anthropology from Stanford University and an M.F.A. in photography from San Jose State University.

In 2012, she was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship to create a series of performance videos about the presence of women in public space in Lagos.

Ogunji’s works are in the collections of the Smithsonian African Art Museum, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark, University of Texas Austin, and Kadist Foundation. She participated in the 2022 Sydney Biennial, the 2020 Stellenbosch Triennale, the 2018 São Paulo Biennial, and the 2017 Kochi-Muziris Biennale, and has exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art Paris, Palais de Tokyo, Seattle Art Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Dallas Museum of Art, and other institutions.

Ogunji’s durational performance video ‘Will I still carry water when I am a dead woman?’ is currently on view in the exhibition A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography at Tate Modern in London (until 14 January 2024). She is currently an artist in residence at the Cité internationale des arts in Paris.

Founded in London in 2011 by Maria Varnava, Tiwani Contemporary is a London and Lagos-based gallery representing artists from Africa and its global diaspora.

Tiwani’s mission is to broaden the representation of art from Africa and the African diaspora, and works closely with continent-based collectors to realise this ambition and to develop a sustainable market for contemporary art from Africa.

Across both the Lagos and London gallery sites, Tiwani Contemporary produces between 10-12 shows per year. Since 2022, it has also supported its artists to participate in the Guest Artists Space Foundation (G.A.S.) residency programme, founded by the artist Yinka Shonibare.

The gallery contributes to the arts ecosystem in Lagos through its programmes such as art shows, talks and publications, the latter produced with the support of the A.G. Leventis Foundation, creating opportunities for local students and emerging practitioners to experience international contemporary art in a Nigerian context.

Internationally, Tiwani Contemporary participates in international art fairs that have included: 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair, Frieze London, New York, and Los Angeles, Art X Lagos, and Art Basel Miami Beach, as well as presenting a lively Viewing Room programme at these fairs, at Cromwell Place and online. Works by the gallery’s roster of artists can be found in the collections of Tate, London, The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, The Government Art Collection, UK, Centre Pompidou, Paris, Musée du quai Branly, Paris, and MoMA New York, as well as many other globally renowned institutions.

Varnava established Tiwani Contemporary, which loosely translates as ‘ours’ or ‘it belongs to us’ from the Yoruba language, with the encouragement of her friend and mentor, renowned Nigerian international curator, Bisi Silva (1962- 2019).

Silva proposed the name as an encapsulation of the gallery’s intentions, which include providing a space inclusive to everyone, and a safe space for dialogue that values nuance and considers context and the multiple dimensions of identity, being, and belonging.

Born in Cyprus, Varnava spent her childhood years in Lagos where she absorbed the visual language of Nigeria and developed the lens through which she has subsequently approached contemporary visual arts practice.

This formative experience was followed by studies in African Studies with a focus in African Art at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), and several years at Christie’s working in business development, before venturing out on her own.

In Lagos Tiwani operates from a purpose-built 2,000sq ft space on Victoria Island, designed in collaboration with Nigerian designer, Nifemi Marcus-Bello and opened in February 2022.

In autumn 2023 Tiwani will relocate from Cromwell Place to a new London gallery on Cork Street, Mayfair.

The gallery will include two show spaces and a viewing room designed by architectural studio, Matheson Whiteley, with bespoke furniture by Nifemi Marcus-Bello, the winner of the 2022 Hublot Design Prize.

It represented artists include, Virginia Chihota, Theo Eshetu, Andrew Esiebo, Mary Evans, Miranda Forrester, Andrew Pierre Hart, Alicia Henry, Délio Jasse, Joy Labinjo, Gareth Nyandoro, Dawit L. Petros, Emma Prempeh, Umar Rashid, Leo Robinson, Robel Temesgen and Joseph Olisameka Wilson.