Gallery 1957 presents In the Name of Love: Introspection, a solo exhibition by Nana Bruce. This new body of work marks Bruce’s second solo exhibition with the gallery and continues his intimate inquiry into the complexities of self-love and the turbulent journey toward it. Through figures caught in states of emotional flux and shadows that act as second selves, Bruce creates a deeply contemplative space—one that doesn’t judge or instruct, but offers room for private reflection and honesty.
In the Name of Love: Introspection being his second solo exhibition with Gallery 1957, Nana Bruce steps into this space of tension, where outward appearance and inner truth meet, resist, and reshape one another. He invites the viewer to join him there, not only to observe, but to begin their own introspection and embark on the uncertain but deeply worthwhile journey of learning to love oneself.
That journey is rarely linear. It unfolds in fragments—raw, fractured, shifting but always with the potential to move forward. Bruce’s figures mirror this unfolding, caught in moments between revelation and quiet collapse; they embody the difficulty and joys of self-examination. Some hover on the edge of clarity, others drift in states of denial. But all are in motion, navigating however slowly, the layered terrain of the self.
Nana Bruce often positions the viewers above his subjects, framing scenes from a bird’s-eye view and placing the viewers as witnesses. This perspective creates distance yet insists on attention. This way, viewers look down not with detachment, but with care, as though watching someone, perhaps ourselves, in the act of self-repair.
In the Name of Love: Introspection, builds on Bruce’s earlier explorations into the role of shadows. Where in his 2023 works, shadows suggested internal conflict and unspoken emotion, here they gain agency, they interrupt, they narrate. In one work, a shadow reaches for love while the figure withdraws. In another, it lifts its head and looks beyond, hinting at forthcoming clarity, the part of the self ready to rise, to take risks, to choose growth. These shadows make visible what we suppress, echo what we fear, and nudge us toward what is true.
The figures in this series are constructed through layers of unpredicted colour: reds, blues, violets, browns and greens. What might at first appear as black skin reveals itself, on closer inspection, as a symphony of undertones. This approach resonates with the underlying principles of incarnato, where skin is often explored not as a flat surface, but as a site of emotional and symbolic depth.
These chromatic layers mirror the conceptual heart of the work: the self as complex and multifaceted, shaped by desire, doubt, religion, culture as well as external expectations. It’s within this same logic of layering that Nana Bruce allows the bare form to emerge, not as spectacle, but as a kind of emotional unveiling. Here, nakedness is not simply about the absence of clothing, but the shedding of persona, performance and protection. Stripped of costume and context, the body becomes a site of reconstruction: a space for vulnerability, for clarity, and perhaps, for beginning again.
In the Name of Love: Introspection opened on the 31st of July and will run until the 11th of September at Gallery 1957, Accra.
