Tiwani Contemporary presents Wura-Natasha Ogunji’s exhibition titled space comma space comma space which embraces not-knowing, the breaking of habits, irreverence and the use of mistakes as integral components of the creative process. Through works on paper, the artist creates a memoir of her time inside the studio – through acts of stitching, cutting, tearing and tracing. The drawings, paintings, and collages are in conversation through shared marks and methods, as well as through titles which suggest a more literal dialogue between the works themselves.
With this new body, Ogunji uses magazine pages, gessoed tissue paper, and glassine, as well as the architectural tracing paper for which she is known. Many of the works have an almost-hyperbolic density to them – especially when considered alongside her past oeuvre where stitched figures are commonly surrounded by large expanses of paper-space. There is an irreverence for the correct way materials should be used: oil paint on tracing paper, a two-two-sided painting (where only one side is visible, but both are important), or the combination of oil and ink forming a resist pattern of dots along the surface of the trace.
Thread and ink on tracing paper, 61 x 61 cm
Image courtesy of Tiwani Contemporary.
In other works, like Lagoon in Tatters, cut paper becomes fringe, leaving two large openings, the paper falling beyond the edges of its own borders. In a similar drawing, those same lagoon lines become an oasis. Or, perhaps the large hole in the paper is the space of refuge. This dance between the fullness, or presence of (artistic) matter, and absence is a recurring language throughout the show, lending an almost-trickster like quality to the work, especially when considered in concert with the titles.
The mother figure appears often in the form of the Gelede mask, part of the Yoruba ritual festival for celebrating women and mothers. For the artist, the paper itself becomes a ritual space. The lines, gestures, marks, motion, cuts and cutaways of thread, graphite, ink, paint, paper and earth are the elemental languages.
Thread, ink and graphite on tracing paper, 30 x 29 cm
Image courtesy of Tiwani Contemporary.
Ogunji’s works are in the collections of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden; The Baltimore Museum of Art; Smithsonian National Museum of African Art; and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, among others. She has a BA from Stanford University (1992, Anthropology) and an MFA from San Jose State University (1998, Photography). She resides in Lagos where she is founder of the experimental art space The Treehouse. space comma space comma space opened on the 3rd of April and will run until the 24th of May 2025.
Thread, ink and graphite on tracing paper, 61 x 61 cm
Image courtesy of Tiwani Contemporary
