View Catalogue | Young Contemporaries 2024 | Rele Gallery, Lagos
This year’s edition of The Young Contemporaries presents new projects by four artists —Praise Sanni-Adeniyi, David Ngaji, Atinuke Macaulay-Layinde and Salomon Moneyang — working across traditional two-dimensional mediums in engaging complex issues from shifting states of being and the nature of existence to family dynamics and relationships.
Click here to view the exhibition catalogue
Atinuke Macaulay-Layinde
Macaulay-Layinde’s presented body of work delves deeper into examining the family as the bedrock of social connections. She specifically explores the dynamics within polygamous and extensive extended families, shedding light on the intricate connections that shape these relationships and influence domestic bonds and hierarchies.
David Ngaji
Titled ‘We See the World as Dying Men’ the presented series explores the transient nature of existence, particularly in a shifting postcolonial/postmodern culture. Begun during the YC residency, the project delves into the decay of both human life and culture, using the human image as a metaphor. Through visual hymns, my works delve into the inexorable march of decomposition, decay, and memory. The works view memory as a process of decay where culture dissolves into an intangible testament to what was.
Salomon Moneyang
“Nfufut nda bot,” the holy family in French, comprises three paintings illustrating the ideal home where Moneyang wished he had grown up. His fascination with the theme of family traces back to his personal experiences. The paintings in this body of work imagines and amplifies the concept of a united and harmonious family.
Praise Sanni-Adeniyi
The presented body of work, ‘Yet Adullam is a burning Hill’ is a documentation of the inescapable synergy between the various realities we can exist in; a testament to how the unfamiliar influences the familiar. The works in the series examine personal experiences in navigating different states of being, grappling between the tangible and the intangible, the real and the imagined, a world that is and that is not, and the resultant effects such struggles may have on our minds and mental spaces, serving as a marker for how our human experiences are forged by a response to a world that is beyond physical.
Young Contemporaries 2024 opened on Sunday, January 7, 2024, in our Lagos gallery – 32 Thompson Ave, Ikoyi.
We look forward to seeing you!
