Remembering the girls of Chibok, Nigeria who, two years ago, were abducted by terrorists Boko Haram.
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| Aisha, Dele Jegede |
“Aisha is a haunting voyage, a kind of omen, a dark, brutal omen that leads without hesitation to the damaged psyche of Nigeria’s decaying collective humanity – the Chibok girls. Aisha exists fearfully in a range of bestialities. The bestialities of rape, slavery and misogyny wrought by fanatical men who descended upon whole schools of girls in Nigeria’s current history. jegede weaves the terror into a ruthlessly direct symphony of self-assessment that Nigeria badly needs.
There are no celestial possibilities in Aisha’s hollowed stare. Her demeanor is of foreboding intensity, her eyes a bewildered pair of deeply internalized terror. She gazes across and beyond the canvas, her broad forehead wrapped in red burqa as if hiding a bleeding hole at the centre of her cranium. Her mouth is clenched as if trapped in the middle of a prolonged hiss at an adult world that forsake her. In waves of green, white and of course red,
Aisha harbors a horror now squelched in the harrowed passage of her throat. In her dark visage, one could almost hear her terrorized scream from here to eternity. This is the one that haunts.” ~Excerpt from Prof. Segun Ojewuyi's essay on Dele Jegede's exhibition 'Transitions' at Terra Kulture, Lagos, Nigeria, starting January 10, 2016.
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