Layers of Seeing brings 5 artistic voices together

What does it mean to truly see? Beyond the immediate impression of a face, a gesture or a familiar scene, what becomes visible when we spend a little more time looking?

These questions shaped Layers of Seeing, a group art exhibition presented at Orisun Art Gallery in Abuja, featuring works by Ibrahim Kareem, Anehita Aletor, Ololade Oletubo, Samson Yusuf and Deborah Ibeme.

Bringing together fine art photography, painting and drawing, the exhibition offered five individual approaches to subjects that are at once personal and widely shared: identity, memory, human connection, change and the experience of moving through the world.

The strength of Layers of Seeing lay in the differences between the participating artists. Each approached the exhibition from a distinct visual position, yet connections emerged naturally across the works. A hand could suggest tenderness or protection; a reflection could become a way of confronting identity; a figure could carry a story of transition; light and shadow could turn an ordinary moment into something remembered.

Ibrahim Kareem, through works including The Unnoticed and Thresholds, focused on the overlooked. His photography drew attention to subtle gestures and moments, using composition and natural light to create images that reward patient observation.

In Ololade Oletubo’s Paths of Becoming and The Journey of Hope, the figure became central to stories of movement and transformation. Working across painting and drawing, Oletubo brought together expressive mark-making, colour and narrative to consider the journeys that shape both individual and collective identity.

Samson Yusuf explored a more inward territory through Presence and Absence and Interior Landscape. His photographs considered how memory and emotion alter the way places, bodies and experiences are perceived. Light became particularly important in the work, revealing some details while deliberately allowing others to remain unresolved.

The photography of Deborah Ibeme, including Shifting Perspectives and Fragments of Time, approached the body through closeness, gesture and atmosphere. Her images created moments of tension and intimacy, inviting viewers to consider relationships between strength and vulnerability, connection and solitude.

Anehita Aletor brought a further dimension to the exhibition, contributing to its movement between different media, perspectives and approaches to storytelling.

Seen together, the works resisted a single interpretation. That openness was central to the exhibition. Layers of Seeing proposed that looking is never entirely neutral: we bring our memories, histories and emotions to what we see, and those experiences determine what we notice.

The exhibition also reflected the range of approaches being pursued by contemporary artists working today, particularly in the ways traditional and photographic practices can occupy the same space without competing for attention. Instead, each medium offered another route into the exhibition’s larger conversation.

Held on 29 August 2026 at Orisun Art Gallery in Abuja, Nigeria, Layers of Seeing created a meeting point between artists, artworks and audiences.

Ultimately, the exhibition was less concerned with providing answers than with sharpening attention. It asked visitors to stay with an image for a moment longer, to look beyond first impressions and to recognise that there is often another story waiting beneath what appears immediately visible.