Modupeola Fadugba: Salon Exhibition

8 March - 30 March

  • Modupeola Fadugba

    Salon Exhibition
  • Modupeola Fadugba (b. 1985 in Lomé, Togo) is a Nigerian multi-media artist whose practice involves painting, drawing, and socially engaged...
    Modupeola Fadugba (b. 1985 in Lomé, Togo) is a Nigerian multi-media artist whose practice involves painting, drawing, and socially engaged installation. The self-taught artist comfortably inhabits the nexus of many disciplines. She holds a Bachelor in Chemical Engineering from the University of Delaware, a Masters in Economics from the University of Delaware, and a Masters in Education from Harvard University. Modupeola has lived in the US, the UK, Rwanda, and Tanzania and currently lives in Ibadan, Nigeria. Modupeola’s artworks explore cultural identity, social justice, game theory, and the art world within the socio-political landscape of Nigeria and our greater global economy. Fadugba’s recent practice researches reflection to represent the act of introspection and embarking on an inner journey.
     
    Solo exhibitions include  (Upcoming) Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, West Palm Beach, USA (2024); Why Nation’s Win (WNW), ALÁRA, Lagos Nigeria (2021); Dreams from the Deep End, Gallery 57, Accra, Ghana (2019); Dreams from the Deep End, New York, US (2018); Heads Up, Keep Swimming, Temple Muse, Lagos, Nigeria (2017); Synchronised Swimming & Drowning, Ed Cross Fine Art, London, UK (2017); Prayers, Players & Swimmers, Cité international des arts, Paris, France (2017).
     
    Group exhibitions include Filling in the Pieces in Black, presented by Maruani Mercier, curated by June Sarpong OBE, Saatchi Gallery, London, UK (2023); Filling in the Pieces in Black, curated by June Sarpong OBE, Maruani Mercier, Brussels, Belgium (2023); The Armory Show, with kó gallery, NY, US (2023); Dubai Art Fair, with Gallery 1957, Dubai, UAE (2022), the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK (2017); Afriques Capitales, Gare Saint Sauveur, Lille, France (2017); Dak’art, Dakar Biennale, Dakar, Senegal (2016) and The Art Energy, London, UK (2015).
  • Highlights and Collections
    In 2016 The People's Algorithm was awarded El Anatsui's Outstanding Production Prize and a 2016 Dakar Biennale Grand Prize from Senegal's Minister of Communication. In 2022, the documentary video that accompanied the exhibition Dreams from the Deep End, which captures Modupeola Fadugba as she paints NYC’s only African American synchronized swim team of senior citizens, the Harlem Honeys and Bears, won the New York Emmy award in the DEI Long Form Content category. Fadugba has held residency at the International Studio and Curatorial Program in New York (2018), as well as Smithsonian Institution Research Fellowship (2020). The same year she held residency at Headlands Center for the Arts. Modupeola’s works have been included in national and international auctions and are held in over 70 private collections worldwide including the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, the University of Delaware, the Sindika Dokolo Foundation collection as well as the Liberian President, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
  • Salon Exhibition

    Salon Exhibition

    Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery is delighted to present a poetic series of mixed-media paintings by the Nigerian artist Modupeola Fadugba. Drawing on her experiences of living in many different countries and former work in the education sector, Fadugba’s multidisciplinary practice investigates and unravels the hierarchical structures that exist on a social, cultural and political level.
     
    In these latest works, she continues her exploration into the setting of the public swimming pool as a site of learning, play and possibility, with a specific focus on groups of young Black women. Rendered in shimmering shades of gold, silver and bronze, the compositions take on a pared-back, almost surreal aesthetic. Take for instance, The Three Graces, which depicts three young women in white bathing suits leaning against one another. Although we intuit the setting from the figures’ clothing, the background has been stripped away so that they appear floating in the dark. This cavernous ‘no space’ highlights the intimacy between the girls while also elevating them, as the painting’s title suggests, to almost mythological status.
     
    In Four Friends, One Reflection we again encounter a group of young women at rest. Here, they are seated along the top of a wall, their backs bodies draped over one another. In front of them, a pool of golden water captures and transforms their closeness into one fluid, rippling body while the wall beneath them also seems to melt into the liquid. It is at once a study of materiality, of the way in which water can both distort and liberate, as well as a conjuring of a kind of a magical underworld where the boundaries that define reality as we know it are dissolved and the self subsumed by the collective.
     
    Golden Pageant Girls further explores the ways in which water opens up a unique language of abstraction, offering a space of freedom and fluidity. In this work, the swimmers are also dancers, their bodies united by synchronised movement. As in The Three Graces, the conventional swimming pool setting has been replaced by a black background but here, the figures are silhouettes, shaped by burnt areas of canvas, while the materiality of their gold leaf swimsuits evokes an impression of both wetness and warmth. This pairing of the elements – water and fire – plays on the concept of rebirth, but crucially, in Fadugba’s work, transformation comes not so much from a specific environment or action, but through community. It is when we come together, the artist seems to suggest, that we are able to find new ways of seeing and existing in the world.