Follow Us on Google
By Henry Akubuiro
Art lovers, collectors and denizens of Lagos and environs are expected to troop into Alexis Galleries, located at Akin Olugbafe Street, Victoria Island, Lagos, for once-in-a-lifetime exhibition themed Spirituality and Light, a dual solo exhibition limning the works of internationally renowned painter, Ebenezer Akinola, and fast-rising painter, Raji Mohammed Babatunde.
The exhibition, which opens on Saturday, November 8, will run through November 22, 2025.
The two artists are connected and united through time, influence, stylistic modes, and tutelage. In his curatorial statement, Uche Obasi said the exhibition marks a long-standing mentorship and a shared search for spiritual transcendence through storytelling within the painterly process.
Besides, the exhibition explores coded divine revelations uncovered through one’s inner seeking and probing, as each artist presents a distinct oeuvre that bridges the shifting yet silent dialogues between blurred realities and persistent truth —from the sacred oasis of finding to the murky mundane of profane resistance.
Obasi said during the preview at Alexis Galleries, “Spirituality and Light engages psycho-visual gestures in painting that invite the viewer to encounter and lay hold of the quiet luminescence of divine radiance —the instincts and intuitions that lead, drive, and shape our everyday lives in both good and bad times. Drawing from psychoanalytic ideas that lived realities first form within our inner scape, the exhibition suggests that individuality and society are interconnected and molded through culture, belief, faith, and lived experience —whether transcendental or mystical.”
Other News
Ebenezer Akinola’s paintings, imbued with subtle light and shadow, are characterized by performative and inventive imagery of real people —often strangers or neighbors who staged for him as formidable subjects. These figures appear engaged in esoteric rituals, draped in heavily layered cloth, adorned with jewel-toned ornaments and head scarves, uniformly positioned in theatrical gestures and encircling a fanning cyclone of burning furnaces.
Akinola’s practice, steeped in staged appropriation of spiritual rituals and identity, explores symbolism encoded in our belief systems. His painting titled Overseer depicts a looming portrait of a man with an intent gaze, wearing ritual headgear and jewel-toned ornaments reminiscent of religious vestments. Akinola links religious heads —imams, archbishops, and pastors —as intermediaries between mortals and the divine. His visual language reconciles cultural familiarity with faith and identity to reveal how spiritual authority and everyday religious experience coexist.
Akinola told Daily Sun: “The body of works I create represents my imagined gatekeepers: figures that stand as custodians of access, wisdom, transformation and life. Through my art, I explore what communal fraternity might look like in a world where the spiritual and the material coexist. In this exploration, I seek to visualise the interplay between individuality and community, the sacred and the everyday. By reimagining gatekeepers and the ceremonies that honour them, I invite the viewer to question their own relationship with the unseen and consider the rituals, both personal and collective, that guide them through life’s many thresholds.”
For Raji Mohammed Babatunde, painting became a primal arena for engaging beckoning spiritual insights, hope, and unfolding truths. His works reveal a myriad of unseen revelations latent within our inner scape.
Babatunde told Daily Sun during the preview at Alexis Galleries: “Light is very symbolic in spirituality and art as means of expression. Merging both of these results in not just a composition but a feeling of sacredness of the divine using the visual language of light. It’s about making the invisible visually visible. In this sub-series, I seek to visualise the sacred connections between humans and the divine; how we reverence and honour the presence and awesomeness of our creator in our private spaces or as a group; the magnificent way his light radiates in our lives and how it reflects on elements that concerns us including our immediate environment.”
Akinola will be exhibiting, “The Overseer 1&2”, “Communion”, “Silence of Expectation”, and ” The Gatekeepers of Paradise”, while Babatunde will be showcasing “Imole”, “Reflection of Our Inner Light”, “Greater Light 1&2”, and “Encounter”.
Interestingly, Akinola mentored Babatunde many years ago, but both artists are full of respect for each other, as they have grown to become marvels in their specialties.
