Notes to Self: New Works by Abraham O. Oghobase presents the artist’s latest investigations into the layered complexity of images. Created during his time in residence with Smokestack’s Analog Studio, the project represents Oghobase’s first foray into silkscreen printing and a new direction of studied inquiry into the imaged history of his Nigerian homeland.
Notes on Self
Artist Statement
This body of work is a personal reflection on tensions that are inherent in the colonial archive. Photography, a historically contested medium, was long used as a tool of imperial power to legitimize colonial dominance and reinforce Eurocentric ideology. The collections in the Herskovits Library of African Studies at Northwestern University, where I spent time in early 2025 and which form the foundation of this exploration, bear testament to the visual language of power. The archive is layered, complicated, and emotionally charged. Within it are images of plants and the scientific instruments used to measure them, portraits of traditional rulers and other colonial subjects. There are photographs of vast, beautiful natural landscapes, as well as images of infrastructure, like railways – built to extract raw materials and minerals – that reveal how these landscapes were, and remain, scarred by exploitation. This juxtaposition between carefully (even elegantly) catalogued natural life alongside the tools of extractive violence speak to the contradictions I perceived in these visual records.
How do I make sense of this? I am ultimately interested in how images shape and haunt us, how they might be reconfigured, and how they continue to carry histories that demand to be felt as much as understood.
Through an intuitive process of isolating areas of interest from fully composed photographs (archival images as well as self-portraits), I respond to the archive. The resulting silhouettes are combined and recombined as characters or symbols spelling out my reflections. Silkscreen prints on delicate Japanese paper further enable me to tune into the frequencies emanating from the hidden and overlooked subjects of these photographs who I connect to on a personal level, through history and over time. My process is not just analytical but experiential as I explore the elasticity of the images and stretch their potential. Through this, I gain agency to respond, rewrite and reframe. It is a gentle yet radical act of re-imagination and homage – a personal and collective offering.
Abraham O. Oghobase was born in Lagos, Nigeria, and is currently based in Hamilton, ON. His work has been exhibited widely including presentation at the 2024 Toronto Biennial of Art; the 2024 Venice Biennale; Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg; and Pace Gallery, London. His work is held in the permanent collections of the MoMA; Art Institute of Chicago; Ackland Art Museum, University of North Carolina; and Museum of Contemporary Art, Kiasma, Helsinki. Oghobase holds an MFA in Visual Arts from York University, Toronto.
