With Substratum: Anatomy of support system, Offoedu-Okeke deepens vision

For his seventh solo show, Onyema Offoedu-Okeke has exhibited 25 works at the Sachs Art Gallery, Lekki, Lagos State. As an informally-trained visual artist, Offoedu-Okeke’s liberal artistic vision cultivated within the 1970s to 80s was inspired by footloose explorations of Enugu’s post-war rustic, but kaleidoscopic streets, imaginative space in encyclopedias and television fairs.

The University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Enugu Campus-trained architect, Offoedu-Okeke had a studio practice centred on portraiture and poster-making, and after graduation, began to investigate design solutions inherent in art.

Since 1997, Onyema has had six solo-themed exhibitions, and more than 24 significant group shows around the world. The most memorable of these shows were Our World in the Year 2000, which held in London, Stockholm and New York (organised by the Winsor and Newton London); the Artiade- Olympics of Art during the Athens Olympic Games in 2004 (organised by Renate Westhoff) and the Miami solo held in Miami, USA, in 2011 (by the Art Expo America).

In the latest show, some of the works exhibited include Lean on Me, Fragrant Thoughts, Days of Thunder, Crown of Beauty and others. Speaking with The Guardian, he said his approach to art, especially in the use of criticism, is to explore the views and conditions of the country.

“The society is pretty much in keeping with the mind of the design. It has to be incisive. It has to be diagnosed. So, in this case, I shifted my views and hopes of observations to be on the usual things to see. You know, marketplace, the catalogue is pretty much a usual scope; but in trying to connect with the title of the exhibition, which I call Substratum: Anatomy of Support System.

“In this case, I try to look at something that has to do with the support systems of the country where some of these images were mined from: The usual lifestyles, the usual scenarios on the street and the ways of life. So, you might wonder, what all these have to do with a support system.”

“In every single part of the life of a human being, there’s always something that plays as the load and the support. I realised that some of the problems we have in this country have to do with how the support system is managed. I saw a particular line that connects the elites with the ordinary people, and it is the support system. There are the people who have the money to support others but there are also people who are physically stronger than the guys who have the money, and there are the people who are brainiacs, the intellectual superior. There are the spiritual ones, the ones who are wise men, who receive from the giver of wisdom, and then in other parts, there are creative people, who have solutions to things.”

When asked about his medium, he said: “I use acrylic as a medium; I opened my studio in Enugu State and instead of opening an architecture studio, I opened an art studio and I used to bring my work from Enugu to Lagos. I found that acrylic fits my movement, it dries quicker than oil. Then, most of the artists were using oil. My use of acrylic revolutionised painting in Nigeria.”