An Insurrection of the Inconspicuous 

On the Painting of Idowu Oluwaseun 

By Heinz Norbert Jocks

The artist Idowu Oluwaseun   was born in Lagos in 1982 and lives today in Houston, Texas; he initially   studied at the School of Art, Design and Printing of Yaba College of   Technology in Lagos and then under Rita McBride at the Arts Academy of   Düsseldorf. His paintings convey a magically charged, sometimes even   mysterious atmosphere, although he is no surrealist with a proclivity for the   magical like René Magritte, but rather a passionate realist with a certain   predilection for details. Working from his own photographs, he does not   simply content himself with making paintings look like photographs. Rather,   he emphasizes their photographic effect, this strange “as if”. Indeed,   although their similarity to photographs is so striking, it remains evident,   that here, the painter is masterfully and subtly reproducing in paint photos   in such a way that the pictures produced in the process can at the end indeed   be viewed as comprehensive paintings. Here, a painter virtually simulates a   photographer in a perfect way, yet at the same time deviates from the   template. On the one hand, this has to do with his assertion of   verisimilitude. On the other hand, it has to do with the fact that he is   concerned with representing a moment and not a lengthier period of time. As a   painter who dives into the wealth of nuances of photography, in order to come   just as close to them as possible, he consequently insists upon the   perspective of his medium. This means he wants to emphasize that his pictures   refer to a reality and do not create any fictions. Subtly oscillating between   the two mediums, he so awakens the paradoxical appearance that what is   painted is photographed and real. At the same time, he says everything is   painted, implying he required more time for the depiction than the photographer   did to take the picture. He lets us linger in this intermediate zone.   Precisely due to this, the moment captured by him gains a meaning cut out   from the indifferent flow of time. He highlights them through painting by   employing accents that be similarly emphasized in photography. All this   forces us visitors to involuntarily ask, why is this moment captured? What is   it referring to and what does it contain? What significance is ascribed to   what is displayed? As a start, his genre is portraits of people from his   Nigerian homeland, men as well as women, all of them young in age. The way in   which he paints portraits of people is reminiscent of the style of   portraiture of African photographers, especially Malian Seydou Keïta, who was   born in 1923 in Bamako and died in Paris in 2001. Idowu invokes his work as a   source of inspiration, and, sure enough, the parallels are noticeable. Keïta   also had his models pose in front of the camera in his studio with their   possessions or accessories like radios, clocks or motor scooters. With him,   they too wear African outfits. Idowu adopted this idea. Yet in contrast to   the people portrayed by Keïta, whose faces touch us emotionally and allow us   to sense their psychological conditions and living situations, Idowu primarily   shows bodies in their entire beauty but without any physiognomy. By   concealing either part or all of the heads of his models with patterned   cloths, so that only their noses and mouths peak out, he lends them a   protective anonymity from any questioning. To the extent that he blends out   everything we ordinarily associate with portraits, we can speak here in a   certain way of an anti-portrait. Neither names are named nor are   characteristics enumerated. In this way, it is impossible to gaze behind the   outer appearance. Thus, we are prevented from forming a concrete image of the   models. The facelessness is the idea, to the extent that reading traces of a   life into the faces is not just pushed into the background, but rather limits   are intentionally set on doing so. According to Idowu, “the faces are   consciously covered in order to protect the bearers of my message. And in   order to show how faceless the minority is”. This information about his   intentions lends another perspective to his portrayals of Yoruba, who pose   like for a photo shoot, but not with the intention of highlighting their   individuality. He has something else in mind. In fact, with the help of the   portraits, he directs our attention to the global public’s ignorance about   his country, which is the most populous on the African continent. He himself   sees in the potential of the mass of the impoverished, suppressed by the   political leaders of his homeland, a possible beacon of hope for humanity.   His concern is the way Nigerians are perceived at home as well as among the   diaspora in other nations, together with the hardship and uncertain living   conditions of his compatriots - impoverished en masse and threatened with   murder - who suffer greatly under the political circumstances. Yet he has   created no pictures out of the desperate daily life of Nigerians. What do we see then? In front   of us two young men, onto whom the light falls from the left in such a way   that half of their naked upper bodies are illuminated and shine, while the   other half gradually darkens. One is wearing blue overalls, the other red   jeans and has, in addition, a black suitcase. Their upper bodies are painted   so accurately, that we visualize nearly every pore on their skin, every sinew   and every muscle. When the one whose face is turned in our direction   positions himself directly in front of us, we are on the one hand reminded of   the dark chapter of slavery, when bodies were eyed up and traded like wares.   On the other hand, we gain the impression that people are being presented   here, whose individuality and personality are consciously being withheld from   us. The confounding omission of the face can be understood as a criticism of   the lack of recognition and the disregard with which the world treats the   culture and the life of the people of Nigeria. At the same time, the faces in   the representation are left out so that they are not subjected to our gaze. A   distance is erected as a safe area, sort of speak. As the heads are covered up   to the neck, neither eyes nor nose are visible, and no mouth or ears can be   seen either. Those portrayed remain absolute mysteries for us viewers that   cannot be solved. The only things that indicate that we are dealing with   twins here are that their bodies are similar as well as that they are holding   hands. Their head coverings differ in color and in pattern as a symbol that   both are standing on the threshold where their previous shared life path   divides. This is not the only image of   a set of twins that Idowu has painted a portrait of. That he occupies himself   with twins has to do with the fact that Nigeria has the highest birthrate of   fraternal twins in the world. They are presumed to be a gift from god and   bring luck, are treated with affection, love and respect and their birth is   welcomed as a good omen. However, in pre-colonial times, they were   interpreted as a bad omen, drowned or left to die of exposure and their   mothers were often killed because one suspected they had slept with two men.   Even today, the people in Yorubaland, in the southwest of Nigeria, believe   that twins have joint souls. If a twin brother or sister dies, the surviving   child will be given a wooden figure at his or her side, in which the second   half of the soul is meant to live on. Clothed like the twin, it is given food   and taken to the market by the mother. The belief is that otherwise, the   living twin could not survive. In contrast to the twin   brothers, whose faces are hidden, the heads of the twin sisters Idowu painted   - their arms propped on an old radio and their hands gently touching - are   not completely concealed. Our gaze falls on the area between their mouths and   chins, especially their shining lips. Their firm sensuality is yet underlined   through their fluttering shirts. Both wear black tank tops over smooth skin, as well as black necklaces   and monochrome hijabs which conceal their hair, neck and ears as usual as   well as their eyes. Their intimate bond can also be seen in the fact that one   sister has placed her hand under the hip of the other one. There is a special reason why   the radio, which suggests a deep, soulful connection between the two women,   appears as a prop not just here but also in other pictures like “Explicit   Content” or “Mopelola”. Idowu has spoken about its cultural significance in   conversation. “When I was growing up, my father played a lot of music which   has stayed with me to this day. Through its inherent power, the radio became   an object of respect. In my homeland there has been no military putsch which   has not first been announced over the government- controlled radio. I always   wondered about how good as well as bad power is inherent in this medium, like   in the case of the Rwandan businessman Félicien Kabuga, who used his radio   station to spark the genocide in Rwanda. But music is also a weapon of the   future as well as also of progressives and, in addition, a giver of life.   Great revolutionaries use music in order to convey positive messages. Like   the saxophonist, bandleader and political activist Fela Anikulapo Kuti, who   died in Lagos in 1997. He battled colonial slavery with his Afro-Beat sound,   which he described as ‘Colo mentality’. Similarly, for example in America,   when the internet did not yet exist, the musicians LL Cool J or Run DMC   communicated with their generation through the boombox.” From here on the picture “The   Collector” opens up to us. In front of us is a young man, whose head is so   wrapped in a cloth that only his braided locks of hair poke out. With his   legs crossed, he sits in a green armchair on a tiled floor in red jeans and   with a naked upper body. His left arm leans on the seat back and his right   arm is propped up on a nightstand. On it is a record player and hanging   behind him on the wall, instead of posters, are LPs and record covers of King   Sunny Adé, who combined traditional with pop music or Haruna Ishola who,   forgoing Western instruments, cited Yoruba proverbs as well as Koran texts in   his songs. The cover of Fela Anikulapo Kuti with an iron chain around his   neck appears in the ornamental window sunk into the nightstand like a   discrete homage. The life of Fela Kuti illustrates that music can be the   emancipatory mouthpiece Idowu demonstrates his respect for. In his texts, he   criticized the social systems in Africa deformed through colonization and   condemned the dictatorial Nigerian military regime. In his album “Zombie”,   released in 1976, he criticized the soldiers of the government as zombies. He   represented a threat to the ruling class due to his popularity amongst the   Nigerian population, his international recognition and the radicality of his   song texts. That is why in 1977 around 1,000 soldiers set fire to his   recording studio in Kalakuta. Kuti survived with a basal skull fracture.   However, his 77-year-old mother died from her injuries. Out of protest, Kuti   had her casket brought in front of the presidential palace of Olusegun   Obsanjo. In 1981, he released the album “Coffin for Head of State” and fled   to Ghana with his band. The deeper we delve behind the ostensible surface of his   paintings, the more it becomes apparent that with only a few references and   accessories embedded as symbols in the pictures, Idowu alludes to events in   Nigeria. In doing so, his commitment to music is informed by the spirit of   hope.