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Retrospection (Gelede) - African Portrait Painting with Traditional Yoruba Mask,,
2023
Orioye Bukola
Painting : oil, acrylic
50 x 40 x 2 cm 19.7 x 15.7 x 0.8 inch
£3,114
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About the artwork
Type
Unique work
Signature
Hand-signed by artist
Authenticity
Sold with certificate of Authenticity from the gallery
Invoice from the gallery
Dimensions cm • inch
50 x 40 x 2 cm 19.7 x 15.7 x 0.8 inch Height x Width x Depth
Support
Framing
Not framed
Tags
Artwork sold in perfect condition
Artwork location: Nigeria
Retrospection (Gelede) is a visually elegant and symbolically potent portrait by Nigerian contemporary artist Bukola Orioye, whose work consistently explores the interweaving of identity, memory, and African spiritual traditions.
This piece portrays a poised Black woman in vivid traditional attire, adorned with a Gelede mask—an ancestral artifact of the Yoruba people known for honoring feminine power, wisdom, and social harmony. Her expression is grounded and introspective, inviting the viewer into a reflective dialogue between self, culture, and spirit. Behind her, luminous green leaves bloom gently, suggesting fertility, healing, and connection to the earth.
What Makes It Unique:
Cultural Depth: The use of a Gelede mask as both a crown and spiritual symbol elevates this painting from portraiture to cultural homage. It acknowledges the sacred roles of women in Yoruba cosmology and the endurance of indigenous knowledge systems.
Oval Format: The rare oval canvas breaks from traditional formats, echoing classical portraiture while asserting a distinct, contemporary voice.
Masterful Execution: Orioye's layering of oil and acrylic creates a subtle interplay of textures gloss against matte, deep shadows against vivid color that gives the figure dimensional presence and emotional weight.
Personal and Political: The painting is both intimate and historical. It reflects Orioye's broader practice of "questioning the present through the past for a better future," offering a powerful meditation on identity, heritage, and Black resilience.
Additional Details:
Condition: Excellent; professionally finished edges and ready for framing or display.
Signature: Signed and dated by the artist on the front.
Provenance: From the artist's studio in Osogbo, Nigeria a city known for its UNESCO-recognized cultural heritage.
Style: Contemporary African portraiture with cultural symbolism and spiritual undertones.
Discover more by the artist
Presentation
Orioye Bukola, born in 1993 in Osogbo, Orioye is a native of Ekiti State—a graduate of Chemistry from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. Trained by Mr. Tope Fatumbi of Topfat Art Gallery; Adamasingba, Ibadan 2019. He is inspired by societal issues and life demands, beauty, culture, and African Spirituality – focusing more on the female gender as a conduit to all else. His philosophy is about simplicity and determination without harm none.
Orioye's mind quest has progressed to infused questionings and suppositions in his canvases beyond mere rhetorical aesthetics; (as the trendy atmosphere now seems mostly to suggest). His works speak in metaphors that flow between the past, the present, and the postulation of the future. He probes into relics to unearth anchored reasoning that shares semblances with contemporary happenings.
His stylistic sense is inventive of punkish style piles of hair reminiscent of the 80s and discotheques, parted with sharp oblique angles which are reflections of the hard chiseled surfaces of the Yoruba effigies he introduces into his works, seasoned with a strong sense of fashion.
Orioye is concerned with African spirituality and how it interfaces with the people's identity, memories, worship, and total well-being. This adaptation of the past to interface with the present and postulate a futuristic nuance is evident in his warm leathered-clad supersonic subjects whose demeanor echoes the Star Trek, UFO, and intergalactic Adour of postmodern Hollywood cinematic periods.
This pendulum of interactions between the past, the present, and the futuristic postulations, defines Orioye's works and lends them a certain direction. The combinations create inquisitiveness for explorations that permeate the borrowed eras, espousing bygone traits of exhumed investigative nuances, memories, identities, and spirituality of bygone cultural epochs. It will be exhilarating to calmly observe the growth of Orioye Bukola's sojourn in the interpretations of his curious and investigative narratively placed overtures.
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