The landscape tradition is rife with imagery of uninterrupted environments. These big, empty spaces can be pastoral and serene, a warm invitation to enter and inhabit, and in the legacy of colonialism, to expand. The works in Abraham Oghobase’s Life of Mine, a solo exhibition on view at the Polygon Gallery in North Vancouver until July 30, challenges this cycle of enticement and exploitation by exploring the impact of resource extraction.
Oghobase, a lens-based artist practicing in Toronto by way of Lagos, Nigeria, has exhibited internationally and is also showing work now at the Museum of Modern Art in New York that blurs, layers and collages written and photographic records from Nigeria’s colonial period as part of a seven-person show, New Photography.
At the Polygon, he strays from documentary photography to embrace a conceptual language. He produces landscapes, or rather, he confronts that tradition through groups of tight works that map historical mining practices onto his body.
Abraham Oghobase, “Schematic 1,” 2023
mixed media installation and antique books, detail of installation at Polygon Gallery, North Vancouver (photo by Dennis Ha)
Diagrams from the 1912 compendium, A Text-book of Rand Metallurgical Practice, an influential handbook about metal refining that informed industrial mining on the African continent, are pulled from their context and layered over images of Oghobase’s feet, hands, and the impression of his face.
In Schematic 1, 2023, a collection of inkjet prints and mixed-media installation, coloured portions of the body are difficult to read for what they are. Oghobase has contorted his flesh on the scanning bed of a photocopier and disembodied pieces fill the frame from edge to edge, blurred through repetitive processing. The resulting works look like heat signatures and render the uncomfortable shifts of the body only vaguely legible.
Abraham Oghobase, “Schematic 1,” 2023
mixed media installation and antique books, detail of installation at Polygon Gallery, North Vancouver (photo by Dennis Ha)
The superimposed diagrams are mystifying. In one image, they seem either expelled from or inhaled into the artist’s mouth; in another, they extend from the fingertips, as if he is trying to paint with light. Somewhere between the schematic line and the smear of the body, it seems like he is casting – or, perhaps, breaking – a spell.
The theme speaks to colonial undoing, where the outlines for extraction are worn away by a different set of technologies. The scanner and the photocopier erode the quality of the images through repetition, while a new context for the diagrams suggests the possibility of a different use.
Abraham Oghobase, “Schematic 2,” 2023
vinyl print and three inkjet prints on Mylar, detail of installation (photo by Dennis Ha)
Oghobase experiments with the limits of legibility like a medium unto its own. Colonialism, as a discourse, a practice, and a territorial disruption, slides under the radar of detectability. We are so used to its presence it is almost invisible. Here, repetition and copying degrade the diagrams and the bodies that the technologies undoubtedly affect. This draws the nasty impacts of colonialism out of hiding.
Despite the centrality of the body, Life of Mine is a highly cerebral show. With most works rendered in vinyl or ink jet, there is a physical flatness. This, combined with some very purposeful methods of distortion, produces an impenetrable quality. It was hard to feel something.
This may reveal more about my own bias in viewing – a certain longing to understand something in my body before I introduce thought. But it also may be Oghobase’s intention. In his works, the body is blurred and distorted, becoming a mere backdrop to extractive practices. However deeply this may be felt, its impact is glossed over in the legacies of colonialism. ■
Abraham Oghobase: Life of Mine at the Polygon Gallery in North Vancouver from May 5 to July 30, 2023.
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The Polygon Gallery
101 Carrie Cates Court, North Vancouver, British Columbia V7M 3J4
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