Oil, pastel & ink on canvas
2026
91 x 61 cm ; 35.8 x 24 in
Price: POA
What Makes a City reflects on the city as an emotional and collective archive shaped more by human presence than by architecture alone. Drawn from memories of childhood and the familiar rhythms of growing up in Nigeria and through layered figures immersed within a saturated landscape, the work blurs the boundary between body, memory, and environment, suggesting that cities continue to exist within those who move through them.
Fragments of markings and textured surfaces evoke traces of language, memory, movement, and shared experience, the invisible structures that quietly shape urban identity. The painting considers how histories, emotional residue, and communal presence become the true architecture of a place.
Inspired the body is an archive, then the skin is its surface of inscription
Oil, pastel & ink on canvas
2026
91 x 61 cm ; 35.8 x 24 in
Price: POA
What Makes a City reflects on the city as an emotional and collective archive shaped more by human presence than by architecture alone. Drawn from memories of childhood and the familiar rhythms of growing up in Nigeria and through layered figures immersed within a saturated landscape, the work blurs the boundary between body, memory, and environment, suggesting that cities continue to exist within those who move through them.
Fragments of markings and textured surfaces evoke traces of language, memory, movement, and shared experience, the invisible structures that quietly shape urban identity. The painting considers how histories, emotional residue, and communal presence become the true architecture of a place.
Inspired the body is an archive, then the skin is its surface of inscription
