"ART SHOULD MAKE ONE INTROSPECTIVE, ART IS A MIRROR"

PROFILE | "ART SHOULD MAKE ONE INTROSPECTIVE, ART IS A MIRROR" - PEJU ALATISE

 In the new movement of art from Africa, more home-based Nigerian artists are tenaciously pushing for the frontline of global recognition and taking lead positions alongside Africans in the Diaspora. One of such artists commanding international attention is the fierce Peju Alatise. She is one of the highest selling living contemporary artists in Nigeria and in Africa too. She has consistently put out works beyond the norm and on the measure of originality and quality she is considered one of the best.

At international art fairs and exhibitions, her paintings and sculptural installations provoke strong reactions amongst visitors. In and out of auction houses in Lagos and in London, her work sells higher than most female artists put into the same art sales. At the debut auction of Bonhams Africa Now: Contemporary African Art Sale in October 2015, Alatise’s High Horses (triptych) sold for £31,250. This is approximately N10, 000,000 going by the current exchange rate in Nigeria now. High Horses was the third highest work sold at the October auction. The first being a wooden sculpture Al Haji by celebrated Ghanaian artist El Anatsui at £146,500. At Arthouse Contemporary in Lagos, Ascension by Peju Alatise was one of the firsts to break auction records in 2011. Outside of auctions and open markets, her works have also been sold higher than £20,000 and it keeps rising.

Peju Alatise is a dynamic woman passionate about humanity. Driven by the need to defend the most downtrodden of human kinds, Alatise uses local stories to address global problems of women’s rights, gender inequality and rights of the girl child. Her work revolves around creating a society that gives a woman the right to choose, starting from the time she enters into the world. These works are then linked with the Yoruba traditional beliefs and socio-political problems in Nigeria. She presents her subjects through paintings and intense large scale sculptural installations. In her words, “My messages will always concern women. I believe a change will come to any home, community or a nation that exercises the rights of its women to choose. It is simple but many people are indolent to this. Give a woman her right to choose life, health, her home, education, love, financial income, and independence.”

Alatise is more than an artist and architect as she is generally addressed. She is an activist using art to fight for the marginalized. It should not be surprising she uses her work to advocate for the rights of women of all ages, she is simply passionate about her gender folk. It is the path she has chosen, to put shame to shame. She believes that a responsibility has been placed on her, same as the responsibility given a musician or a writer. And it is maybe not a coincidence that she is also a writer, an author of two short stories – Orita-meta: Crossroads and Silifat amongst other publications on her art. However, her mission should not be confused with feminism has she has reservations on the perception of that label.