Headload

About

Headload at the arc Gallery presents the innovative works of Nigerian modern artist and architect Onyama Offoedu-Okeke. The exhibition will show case paintings and works that examine the irony of global industrial and economic growth and the subsequent burden in relation to the developing world where street-level enterprise consists of ordinary people, bearing the burdens of progress of industry and poverty. All manner of goods, from colourful textiles to electronic goods, are conveyed on robust heads. These mobile human markets ply their trade each day to survive, irrespective of weather or economic conditions without concern for human frame. Bearing the headload raises issues of social-economical welfare and provokes discourse on the state of the infrastructure. In Onyama's paintings, dramatic head-crests take the form of poetic superstructures built in adaptation to economic hardships and the press industry.