Crossing Lines

Crossing Lines is an exhibition featuring two artists Uthman Wahab and Soji Adesina, that aims to deconstruct the concept of how drawings interact with space and also how space defines or interacts with art- that is, the barrier between an artwork and the space it exists in as opposed to the subject of the artwork and the ground it's made on. (paper, canvas, panel, e.t.c.).                  

 Uthman is a multi-disciplinary artist whose mediums of expression are painting, graphic design, film, photography, sculpture and installation. His depiction of fat women in this series attempts to broaden the discourse on the concept of defining “ugliness” as an opposite of beauty. It raises the question on what the wrong body type is. Why is it that to speak about beauty is to conclude on the character and ethics of an individual? Why is beauty good and ugly, bad? Is ugliness not a constantly revised notion that is always relative to various historical periods in different cultures and times? Who defines ugliness and beauty?

The 'FAB-are-us!' series (FAB means Fat African Ballerinas) is an examination of the social constructionist insight about race, the struggle against racism. Why are there very few black ballerinas or gymnasts? The concept that the black woman is forceful- more earthy, and has the wrong body type in comparison to the “right type” whose desired traits include high arches, a flexible torso, small head, small bust, slim hips, small ankles, long arms and legs- is problematic. 

Soji is a multi-disciplinary and multi-media artist whose primary medium of expression includes painting, graphic design, film, photography, sculpture and installation. Soji has forged a distinctive impasto style, through radical experimentation with materials and technique, with subjects in his paintings appearing involved, deconstructed and at times even afflicted and tortured. This series by Soji Adesina focuses on the underlying effects of cultural hybridization. The series is meant as a pun to showcase the rather pretentious attitudes of attaching sophistication to certain perceived behavioural or gestural elements of foreign cultures.