Nigerian painter Eniwaye Oluwaseyi desires to substitute the outlook for albinos and SARS

The young artist is exhibiting at the end of 2020 at the ADA Art Gallery in Accra, Ghana. His paintings, powerful and committed, seek to condemn the exaggeration of SARS’s controversial strength in Nigeria, but also the fate of a persecuted society: that of people with albinism.

From our correspondent in Accra,

Eniwaye Oluwaseyi is 26 years old with a slim figure and dreamy eyes. The young painter is exhibited for the first time at Accra, at the new contemporary art gallery ADA under the title “Policy for shared spaces”.

“In the beginning, I wanted to be an architect,” he says. “In architecture, we use the concept of shared space for the places where people coexist, meet and discuss. I wanted to reinvest this concept to dream of an ideal, a peaceful shared space without conflicts. ”Concepts that are very current in Nigeria, which he left only in time to attend the opening.

Last October Nigerian authorities dismantle Special Flight Control Brigade (SARS), a heavily contested police unit, after a week of strong popular mobilization. SARS was accused of extortionillegal arrests, torture and extrajudicial killings. A theme that can be found in Eniwaye Oluwaseyi’s paintings: a series of three portraits representing young men in front of whom a target is placed.

The tragic fate of the Albino community

“I did not want to define my art as political,” explains the young painter, but I try to evoke social comment. Following the paintings on SARS attracts another series of attention: three portraits of albino people, a man and two women. The model of these portraits, says Eniwaye Oluwaseyi with a touched smile, is none other than his own sister who suffers from this genetic anomaly. “In sub-Saharan Africa, albinos are being wiped out by ignorance.Sometimes even killed.»

In some countries, such as Burundi and Tanzania, some albinos are hunted and discovered for witch rituals. In 2017,The Albinos Foundation has launched an initiative called the “Albinism Rights Project” to call for respect for the human rights of albinos in Nigeria.

“People need to know what it really is when we talk about this category of people,” argues Eniwaye Oluwaseyi. In African society, we have an ambivalent relationship with albinos. They are considered Africans, but … not quite either. We do not treat them as our own. Why?”

A new generation of artists appearing on Instagram

“Politics in Shared Spaces” is the first exhibition by the young artist who first started painting in 2019. “After four years of monochrome drawing, I started painting, because for me, colors are a way of expressing his feelings,” he says. I wanted to communicate with more finesse. “

Eniwaye Oluwaseyi’s paintings are exhibited not only in this gallery in Accra, but also and especially on social networks. It is in addition Instagram which enabled him to access this first initiation. “It was not me who found it, it was he who found me,” says Adora Mba, the director of the ADA gallery. I think that “he sent me a private message or that he tagged me on one of his post. Today, young artists use Instagram as a portfolio, and that makes them known much easier. ”

What appealed to her about Eniwaye Oluwaseyi’s work, she explains, beyond the beauty of painting, was the power of their symbolic meaning. “And meaningless art is not really art, is it?” Only beautiful designs ”.

Create a painting representation for people with albinism

Among his inspirations are Eniwaye Oluwaseyi Barkley L. Hendricks, Toyin Odutola and Njideka Akunyili Crosby. “I was very impressed by Barkley L. Hendrick’s light. He has a way of capturing black with vibrant colors, reflections … Like him, I use bright colors in clothes and backgrounds to bring out the black of the subject’s skin. ”

He also quotes Kerry James Marshall, a Chicago painter known for his majestic portraits of African Americans. “I remember an interview with Kerry James Marshall,” says Eniwaye Oluwaseyi, “where he said that when he only went to the museum, he only saw Renaissance paintings of white people. It reminded me of the albino community. In how many exhibitions can we see portraits of people with albinism? Imagine a young albino girl who has been told all her life that she is African. But when she goes to an exhibition and she only sees people with black skin. The question she wants to ask herself is, “Who represents my skin color?” “

This question Eniwaye Oluwaseyi tried to answer on his scale. And when asked if his sister liked the portraits he made of her, he contented himself with a concise answer and a smile: “Very much.”

.