At The Breeder Gallery, Athens, the Nigerian artist tethers the superficial conventions of European portrait painting to the semiotics of Blackness.
Emecheta repeats his use of colour across this suite of paintings: the coffee-coloured wall behind the subject of Untitled, for instance, recurs in the dress of the woman in Guardian Angel, a portrait based on a photograph of Emecheta’s mother and sister. These sparks of intimate relation between each of the characters in Emecheta’s exhibition confirm that his method, both as a colourist and as a figure artist, is based on the premise that race and form are as inextricably linked in the questions we ask about history as those posed as fantasy.
25 Aug 2021
