Alexis Galleries presents Gele, a dual show that brings together two contemporary masters – Arinze Stanley and Dotun Popoola – whose practices explore a common thread – the Gele phenomenon, a culturally relevant contemporary women’s headgear, historically popularised since the 1960s in Southern Nigeria. The headgear has since transformed into a fashion statement in the everyday lives of Nigerian women, notably on occasions.

The artists, known for hyperrealism, their naturalistic drawing, paintings, and monumental metal sculpture, present a mix of extraordinary, pristine paintings and sculptures that captivate conscious imagination.

The show examines how a single, familiarised cultural phenomenon like the Gele can be rendered and reimagined to reveal extraordinary possibilities.

Through the works of Arinze and Popoola, the gele moves beyond adornment and becomes a language through which womanhood is explored.

In Arinze’s paintings, the women meet the viewer with a striking sense of presence while in Popoola’s monumental sculptures, the female figure is transformed into something commanding and almost regal.

Across both practices, the gele becomes inseparable from the woman who wears it.

In their curatorial statement, Uche Obasi and Chidera Ogbu, said: “The exhibition brings a joint presentations of Gele from the perspective of two contemporary Nigerian masters, Arinze and Popoola, whose works come together around this familiar yet culturally common phenomenon: prominently rooted in Nigerian women’s fashion, ceremony, weddings, religious gatherings, identity, and freedom of social expression.”

They continued, “For Gele, the artists turn to a popular form that is strikingly recognisable within Nigerian society, asking how something so familiar can be re-made to reveal extraordinary possibilities. Beneath the glamour of the gele’s popularity and practices lies the inner lives of its wearers – identity, self-presentation, and self-knowledge.”

They said: “Arinze’s portraits draw us towards the women themselves. Their faces are not secondary to the gele; they hold our attention. There is a quietness and intensity in their expressions that suggests an interior world beyond what is immediately visible. The gele frames these women, but it does not define them.”

One of Arinze’s iconic paintings reflects the female gaze. It shows a young woman wearing anintensely dark, reddish traditional Nigerian head tie like a majestic crown – a tiara, the regalia of
an empress – revealing sheer self-knowledge and presence.

In Popoola’s sculptures, this relationship takes on another dimension. His monumental figures transform the gele into an almost architectural form. For Popoola, welding monumental scrap metals has been his preoccupation over the decades. One of his works on display shows a dominant matriarch in a majestic, glossy red draped gele – sculpted into a dramatic, wide fan – that rises and spreads behind her head like a crown. The gele is designed with gold filigree patterns, with a long, tasseled-like tail in gold crips cascading down her side arm.

Together, the artists demonstrate how the gele phenomenon has moved between cultural representation and social presence. It invites us to consider the gele not simply as an item of Nigerian fashion, but as part of the ways women construct and express themselves.