Friday, 29th March 2024
To guardian.ng
Search

Isiuwe’s exhibition portrays MAN in his natural elements

By Ijeoma Thomas-Odia
26 July 2017   |   3:31 am
Emmanuel Isiuwe is set for his first solo art exhibition of paintings and drawings titled ‘MAN,’ which celebrates the male-folk and the artist as a man. This will hold from Friday, July 28 through Wednesday, August 2, 2017, at Didi Musuem, Victoria Island, Lagos.

Emmanuel Isiuwe is set for his first solo art exhibition of paintings and drawings titled ‘MAN,’ which celebrates the male-folk and the artist as a man.

Emmanuel Isiuwe is set for his first solo art exhibition of paintings and drawings titled ‘MAN,’ which celebrates the male-folk and the artist as a man. This will hold from Friday, July 28 through Wednesday, August 2, 2017, at Didi Musuem, Victoria Island, Lagos.

With a career spanning over 27 years and having enjoyed visibility in Nigeria and beyond, Isiuwe’s MAN series began in 2013. It mirrors the artist, and serves as a reminder of his nature and position, which largely condition him to certain societal expectations and responses.

For Isiuwe, who is merely obeying his creative impulse and relying on his experience, he is exploring what could be said to be his own daily activities as a husband, father and guardian, with images of reclining male figures, a man holding up his child in admiration, male labourers with shovels or wheel barrows (who, according to the artist, rise up early in the morning to hustle for jobs at several designated sites in Lagos), men dressed in (Igbo) ethnic outfits won by dignified individuals, including rulers, and others who gather for initiation into manhood ceremonies, or are engaged in sundry activities. These images, upon close examination, offer a pattern highly suggestive of a bias for the male gender, and which sets the tone for the exhibition.

According to Isiuwe, “The MAN series, by extension, subtly interrogates salient societal issues of ‘misogyny’ and ‘patriarchy,’ both stereotypes often assigned to men owing to circumstances where women are supposedly oppressed. These negative tags, in other words, undermine men’s larger efforts in striving to maintain their homes. A man must always be in control, especially in the sense of accepting responsibilities, and in this case, drawing attention to him or making him the focus of an artistic expression scores him some importance.”

In this article

0 Comments