Pure Water: Chika Idu

SMO is pleased to present Chika Idu’s latest artworks with an exploration of submerged figures suspended within clear blue waters. The figures drift with intention, exploring a pristine and pure underwater world of wonder and harmony. The water is thick with painterly movement through layered palette-knife gestures, and found materials. These experimental impressions mimic the shifting currents and refraction of light beneath the water's surface, a pristine world that is powerfully juxtaposed against a series of intense portraits of women and children in the flow of life’s challenges and questions.

Pure Water introduces a critical and ironic reference to Idu’s aspiration for a pristine, balanced world, while the term also refers to the plastic “pure water”  drinking sachets, used to quench the thirst of millions of Nigerians within heavily populated and polluted city centers. These water sachets clog up the drains and waterways,  becoming an environmental hazard which affect people’s quality of life. These ubiquitous plastic sachets are far from “pure”, representing objects of easy accessibility and necessity, especially within coastal and riverine communities.

A short film by SMO Contemporary Art accompanies the exhibition, offering insight into Idu’s ideas, process and practice.