Solo presentation: I Love Sharing The Bed With You
Sola Olulode conceived over the last few months smaller monoprint works on paper and larger paintings on canvas, experimenting with new forms of presentation.
Olulode is a London based artist who works across the medium of paint and textile influenced by Yoruba Adire textiles. She reinterprets images of majoritively Black Womxn expressed through diverse reflections of feminine energies, and inspired by her own identity as a queer Black woman.
The materiality of the larger works in this show, which use textile to imitate bedding, enhances the interpersonality of this snapshot of a love story that shows the subjects always touching, their codependency and romance. The perception is shifted as the audience enters into their sleeping space, where the promise of dreams and contemplative time is tangible. The combination of painterly elements, wax outlines and batik backgrounds create layered elements almost as if you can feel the duvet of the bed the two subjects are sleeping in. The repetition of these ideals throughout the series exemplifies regular por trayals of queer womxn. Sola Olulode’s paintings present candid moments of time, which appear to be centered in the midst of a longer story and history. This methodology refers to the ancient techniques of tapestries, wall hangings and drawings as a method of storytelling and archiving historical events. For the first time, Olulode is experimenting with new forms of presentation to express this new relationship between her work and these ancient methodologies - taking the paintings away from the ’ traditional’ stretched canvas on bars, to free flowing wall hangings. In addition to the attention to the freeness of movement of the bodies Olulode illustrates in the work , her reference to traditions of old masters paintings, specifically classic European portraiture reveals her efforts to disrupt the typical methods of fine art painting and is integral to her practice.
- Pacheanne Anderson, Art Writer (he/they)
Artsy Viewing Room Extended
Closing December 31, 2021
Click here to view install images
Read Essay by Pacheanne Anderson
Installation view: VOLTA Basel 2021
Publication
Paintings
Selected works on paper
Works from the group show: MODERN WOMXN. You think You know Me.
