O’DA Art Gallery, taking centre stage and reasserting the presence, complexity and creative sovereignty of Black identity in contemporary visual art, has launched a powerful group exhibition, titled, Black Figuration Is Alive and Well.
The exhibition, which is currently holding at the gallery in Victoria Island, Lagos, kicked off on Sunday, July 13, 2025 will conclude next weekend, August 9, 2025.
In a global climate that questions the relevance of Black portraiture, this show is offering a firm and vibrant response: our faces, our stories, and our visions matter, now more than ever.
Mobolaji Ogunrosoye, Orry Studio and Lakin Ogunbanwo deconstruct photography and collage to explore memory, beauty, and layered identity. Featured artists include Reuben Ugbine and Djakou Kassi Nathalie who reinvigorate African sculpture with references to spirituality, heritage, and surreal form. Anthony Nsofor, Isaac Emokpae and Joseph Ogbeide use linework and abstraction to examine family, ancestry and cultural preservation.
O’da Gallery in The Ascendancy of Machine with Abass, Amoda
Soji Adesina, Chika Idu and Olajide Ajayi (LA Draws) dive into Afro-surrealism to interrogate dreams, technology and diasporic memory. Taiye Idahor and Stephen Price offer emotionally textured works that reflect on freedom, femininity and inherited memory.
Simon Ojeaga’s rhythmic “fractellations” evoke the meditative, emotional quality of Yinka Bernie’s soulful soundscapes. And Opeyemi Olukotun presents poignant realist portraits that honour everyday Black life with dignity and empathy.
Together, these artists demonstrate that Black figuration is not static or reductive, it is expansive, experimental and urgent. Obida Obioha, Gallery Director and curator of this exhibition, said, “The ongoing prominence of figuration in Black and African art stands not as aesthetic repetition, but as an urgent political and cultural gesture, a reclaiming of presence, history, and imaginative sovereignty.”
