Through dazzling beadwork, a mixed-media art exhibit in Palm Beach County celebrates African Yoruba heritage and family traditions from a rising Nigerian star in global contemporary art.
Multimedia artist Modupeola Fadugba, who is most notably known for her colorful and 鈥妋onochromatic paintings of 鈥妔ynchronized swimmers, tries to capture the 鈥渢ogetherness and a synchronicity,鈥� in everyday life, she told SA国际传谋.
Her first West Palm Beach exhibit marks a subtle shift from swimmers.
贵补诲耻驳产补鈥檚 鈥� 鈥淎lso, What Are We Wearing?鈥� 鈥� at the Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery in West Palm Beach spotlights Nigeria鈥檚 , which features Africans parading in coordinated attire accompanied by drummers, dancers, and horses in the Ijebu-Ode, Ogun State of Nigeria.
鈥溾�奍 find a similar aesthetics and movement in this festival where groups are wearing the same thing,鈥� 贵补诲耻驳产补鈥檚 told SA国际传谋. Festival participants, moving and dancing in rhythm, often wear prestigious clothing made from Aso Oke, a traditional, handwoven striped fabric created by the Yoruba people of southwestern Nigeria.
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鈥淚've attended the festival. It is chaotic,鈥� said Fadugba, who was born in Lom茅, Togo to Nigerian diplomats. 鈥淪o the pictures are more organized than the actual event itself, which I find really fascinating that behind something so organized and so ordered, there's actually a lot of disorder happening in reality.鈥�
Fadugba, who has an academic background in chemical engineering and economics from the University of Delaware, as well as a master's in education from Harvard University, was recently featured on the New York Time鈥檚 list of .
She鈥檚 part of a new wave of international interest in African music, fashion, and art. She said her interest often center around the synchronicity of chaos and organization.
Fadugba spent time working closely with artisans, tailors, beadworkers, saddle makers across West and East Africa, learning not just how their objects are created, but how each craft carries history, identity, and a sense of place.
鈥溾�奍 think maybe 75% of the works have some form of beading,鈥� she said.
Her intricately beaded saddles and horses, floating on mottled canvas, are part of an ever-evolving creative process that began decades ago in her teenage years and honors the stories behind these West and East African traditions.
鈥溾�奍 started working with beaders in Tanzania as a teenager. So I would shadow these Maasai women,鈥� she said. 鈥淎lthough beading culture and beading aesthetics is really core to Yoruba aesthetics as well, my introduction actually to beading comes from East Africa and more precisely from the Maasai women of Tanzania and more specifically Arusha," a city in Tanzania which borders Kenya.
Her artwork and beadwork are labor-intensive, involving complex techniques and experimentation with stitching and various kinds of glue. But it's the collaboration between African cultures that keeps everything intact.
鈥溾�夾nd so there's a lot of sort of invisible contributions and that's why it's nice to have these discussions because an artist doesn't work on their own as well. There's a lot of help. There's a lot of mentorship, there's a lot of teaching, there's a lot of mistakes," she said.
鈥淚 call it my museum of mistakes. When you look at the beading works that never made it over time.鈥�
Fadugba describes the creative process as 鈥渁n algorithm,鈥� a set of steps used to solve a problem.
鈥娾�漇o this play between flow and intuition, but then order and process,鈥� she said. 鈥淭hat's always something that I grapple with in my works and 鈥妕hat comes to bear quite visibly in this body of work and in in the festival itself.鈥�
IF YOU GO
What: "Also, What Are We Wearing?" exhibit
When: Runs through November 29
Where: Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery: 2414 Florida Ave, West Palm Beach, FL 334011
Learn more .
