Dubbed ‘the Oscars of the art world’, SOLO Contemporary’s Artist Award 2024 was awarded to Abe Odedina’s latest exhibition, Son of the Soil (2024), shown by Virginia Damtsa and The African Art Hub at this year’s British Art Fair. Introduced by Zavier Ellis, each year SOLO Contemporary spotlights ten current British artists whilst bringing a much needed ‘insurgent energy’ (British Art Fair, 2022) to the fair. Odedina now joins previous prizewinner Emma Bennet in the SOLO Contemporary’s third year at the British Art Fair.
Born in Ibadan, Nigeria in 1960, Abe Odedina left his successful career as an architect after a trip to South America in 2007. Odedina found himself transformed by the venerable acts of artists such as the Painters of the Sacred Heart, Haitian voodoo practitioners, and other unnamed folk artists, and was subsequently inspired to create a symbolically rich brand of magical realism drawn from his own idiosyncratic cultural heritage. At the British Art Fair, Odedina’s work stood out not just for its aesthetic appeal but also its capacity to evoke fecund narratives through symbolism.
With its densely layered visual language, Son of the Soil (2024) captivates by interweaving disparate traditions and mythologies in a way which emphasises the universal nature of the human experience. Odedina cares not for cultural distinction, but rather focuses on ‘the hybrid’:
‘Purity has no fascination for me. I’m much happier with a mix of things jostling together, ideas jostling together. It’s richer, more generous’ (Odedina, 2023).
This ethos is palpable in this exhibition, where every piece resonates with an invitation to reflect on our own journeys in the context of a shared human existence. Through combining Yoruba figurative tradition with symbolism such as the crossed keys of St Paul and the mariner’s cross in modest renderings of everyday life, Odedina births his own distinct style of magical realism.
Such chimerical motifs disclose the ‘correspondence between ordinary humans and the gods’ (Odedina, 2023): the figure depicted in Entomologist (2024) is transformed from an everyday illustrator into a divine creator of magical beings. Compositions are spliced into distinct sections in Above the Parapet (2020-2023) and Seven Heavenly Virtues (2018) to suggest different states of being and consciousness. Even minute details such as the blackened fingernails of Killing Time (2024) hold mystical power. In a world where the real often overshadows the fantastical, these pieces serve as a reminder of the magic inherent in everyday life: the triumphs, tragedies, miracles, and disasters of human life bound together by the tapestry of the human experience.
These works largely posit the human form at the centre of their composition as a powerful motif. Shared by every human being, these bodies are a familiar vessel through which Odedina’s ideas can be transported; as well as a nod to a familiar inspiration and muse shared by thousands of creatives across place and time. In this way, Odedina grounds his work in common experience and pre-established convention whilst elevating these pieces to divine heights through his mythical thematic undercurrent. Odedina’s technique further lends itself to this fusion of the human and the divine with its richly layered acrylic carving out simultaneously celestial and earthly scenes on materials as ordinary as plywood. It is this mixture of the everyday and the fantastical, the beauty in the mundane, that earned his work the title of ‘Brixton Baroque’ (Africa First, 2018).
With his new accolade, Odedina continues to pave the way for a new generation of artists who embrace cultural hybridity and narrative richness. His work is a testament to the power of art as a means of storytelling, and his ability to weave complex and disparate cultural yarns into visually compelling pieces not only enriches the British art scene but also makes for essential viewing for anybody interested in the intersection between the magical and the everyday.
References:
Abe Odedina (2023). British Nigerian artist Abe Odedina’s solo show I’m A Believer at @edcrossfineart London. [online] YouTube. 10 Nov. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHJk6HKoI90 [Accessed 7 Oct. 2024].
Africa First (2018). Abe Odedina. [online] Africafirst.art. Available at: https://collection.africafirst.art/artists/artist/287873 [Accessed 7 Oct. 2024].British Art Fair (2022). Fair News: SOLO Contemporary. [online] British Art Fair. Available at: https://www.britishartfair.co.uk/british-art-news/solo-contemporary [Accessed 7 Oct. 2024].
Esther Lundgren is a London-based freelance writer and Comparative Literature graduate. Her particular interests lie in postcolonialism and the arts as a means of amplifying underrepresented voices.
