Through OLIVER Enwonwu’s strong figurative style, Politics of Representation interrogates the complex layers of history connecting the African continent with the West. His powerful portraiture celebrates  the cultural, political, and socio-economic achievements of Africans and how these have affected the identity of the global black race.  The exhibition contains works from Enwonwu’s  ‘Body of Power’, ‘Signares’, ‘Belle of Senegal’, and ‘Wanderers’ series, which explore the effects of migration, eventually “dissolving boundaries and our notions of time and space.”

He paints pre-dominantly female figures in aristocratic poise with stoic expression, observing their on-lookers with elegance, formality, and grace. There is a quiet aloofness which exudes from their gaze, as if in defiance of being forgotten, and finally being celebrated with proper recognition.

As a counter-point to his female subjects’ elan and dignity, Oliver’s masquerades are painted in classical dance poses, exhibiting athletic agility mid-air. The artist is clearly influenced by his late father’s exploration of the ogolo masquerade, but Oliver’s rendition centers around the spectacle of their performance, dance, costume, and music, pivoting around an epicenter of traditional and spiritual energy. In Spirit in Flight, Oliver paints a lythe masquerade dancing against a thunderous cloudy sky, a masked spirit-being in full cultural regalia. It is from this rhythmic performance that Oliver’s art captures our  imagination as if we are bystanders enjoying a frenzied traditional dance in the village square, the heat rising as the masquerade twirls with lightening speed.

The masquerades are in contrast to Oliver’s male portraits, of Tuareg men from Nigeria’s northern Sahel region. These powerful portraits of faces wrapped within a complex circuit of rich twisted fabric, reveal only piercing wise eyes. They appear to know much more than they care to reveal. Their dry parched skin reflect the dips and troughs of their nomadic journeys, steeped in age-old tradition.