By Osa Mbonu-Amadi
Against the backdrop of widespread violence in many countries, Nigerian painter and fine art photographer, Tobiloba Awogbemila explores themes that resonate with topical socio-cultural issues.
In this body of work, entitled, “Rhythms of Home – Musical Collection”, Tobiloba draws images from the domains of music and law to not only entertain, but to appeal to the conscience of viewers on the need to focus on value adding virtues and cultural landscapes.
Tobiloba’s Rhythms of Homes – Musical Collection” is an irrepressible composition, advocating the preservation and propagation of Africa”s cultural heritage. The innovative artist explores visual narratives, mirroring everyday experiences and social realities through painting and photography.
Leaning on his legal background, the creative who believes that “law and art are interconnected systems of observation,” evokes an atmosphere of a courtroom session in the gallery with titles like “No Witness.” In this piece, he tags paintings, using the language of law, and mirroring exhibits, testimonies, and cross-examinations in court sessions on canvas.
Tobiloba uses his work to record socio-cultural activities, priming law, language, and art, as resonating rhythmic ritual sounds via paintings that transcend visual representation. For instance, Trauma is depicted as evidence while culture repeatedly recurs in some images, including wearable objects.
The artist represents cultural heritage and identity through Yoruba culture-specific images like talking drum, shekere, agogo, and bata.
Setting dark colours against light ones, Tobiloba creates a serene atmosphere, intentionally depicting solemnity, reverence, and devotion in the room. What’s more?
Aesthetics emanating from the body of work has more than a surface appeal as it challenges the viewer to interrogate it beyond the frame.
With thick layers of paint functioning like layered time, hands on musical instruments, and imagined performances, the artist portrays memory on canvas, painting it to read like irrepressible evidence of culture and communal existence.
This collection also inspires ancestral presence and nocturnal devotion through the dominance of a deep blue ground depicted as a sacred field filled with worship objects: beads, ropes, gourd, straps.
Across the series, Tobiloba depicts musical instruments as human beings, posturing as witnesses. Beadwork, ropes, straps, and other relics of culture are crafted by the artist as persons, playing agency roles in close-up compositions: remembering, communicating, and testifying. Works featured in the series include: Voice of the Shekere, Drums of the Heart, and Shekere Family Tree.
With the thick layers of paint functioning like layered time, hands on musical instruments, and imagined performances, the artist portrays memory on canvas, painting it to read like irrepressible evidence of culture. This is visibly evident in “Voice of the Shekere” and other pieces, which recall historic events in seeming flashbacks.
Silence is depicted as a voice in “Voice of the Shekere” with “the shekere” presented as a static image, hanging at a spot while vibrating visually. The texture of this piece suggests an aftertaste-sound that lingers after the main performance, conveying the theme of aftermath of a memorable event. Observed closely, the piece gives the impression of an elegy of traditional practices that are remembered, but no longer performed by the succeeding generation.
In Drums of the Heart, the artist animates painting beyond triggering rhythm and melody to a communal voice. Musical instruments like drums are grouped like members of a family engaged in conversations or exciting festivities. These visual configurations make the canvas appear to engage the audience in artistic dialogue.
In the piece, Shekere Family Tree, Tobiloba portrays a familial order, conveying the central message that the family, as an agent of socialisation and cultural transmission, is indispensable. Shekere Family Tree reflects melody, rhyme, and rhythm via diverse beads, colours, and ascending sizes of lineage footprints. The images combine to reframe cultural heritage as a dynamic performance and not a static possession.
Rhythm of Homes – Musical Collection highlights cultural elements preserved in paintings. Instead of idealising an imagined past like most historical artifacts, Tobiloba’s body of work documents musical objects and instruments, mirroring the themes of interdependence, continuity, and social positioning.
The artist prioritises communal instruments in the series rooted in common identity, suggesting that belonging, as an embodied phenomenon, is transmitted through feeling, touch, and bonding.
Artworks etched in legal frame in this collection include Tobiloba’s No Witness series, which involves interrogatory descriptions, evidences, and testimonies. The artist treats personal experiences like trauma as exhibits, showcasing how culture is engrained in objects, images, and repetitive patterns.
Tobiloba’s blue paintings appear deliberately troweled to arrest the viewer’s attention, as the palette knife treats every canvas alike, culminating in a wowing masterpiece.
With dominant themes drawn from the domain of law, language, and art, Rhythms of Homes-Musical Collection features art pieces that viewers from diverse strata of the society will find engaging.
Combining photographic finishing with a filmmaker’s view finding, the iconic artist builds each painting as a contested scene, staged recollection, and historical archive.
Traces of Tobiloba’s background in law, filmmaking and photography characterise each piece as he weaves paintings that heighten the tension between staged memory and documented narratives thematically reflecting divergent voices.
In Rhythms of Home-Musical Collection, Tobiloba captures emotive and vicarious experiences via materials he transforms into gestures and symbols of cultural identity through painting. He creatively combines paints, colours, and texture, to create musical rhythms, evoking salient voices of celebration.
Art enthusiasts and the general public will readily connect with Rhythms of Homes – Musical Collection as it embodies socio-cultural ethos that resonate with their present realities.
Tobiloba’s work thrives on melody, lineage, and nostalgia rather than temporal visual configurations.
Viewers that see art as an integral part of their culture and aesthetic emblem will find Tobiloba’s paintings rich, textured, and engaging, as it combines sound and visuals to celebrate culture.
