Wunika Mukan Gallery is proud to present The Escapist Nature of Things, a solo exhibition by Lagos-based multimedia artist Timilehin Oludare Osanyintolu. Working primarily with ink on paper and sound, Osanyintolu invites us into a world that is at once deeply personal and strikingly universal, a layered space where fantasy, critique, and curiosity coexist.

Central to this exhibition is the artist’s ongoing engagement with escapism, not only as theme, but as process, medium, and metaphor. Informed by the artist’s lived experience and philosophical exploration, The Escapist Nature of Things investigates how we retreat from, respond to, and reconstruct reality. Osanyintolu’s signature ink drawings shift between tightly rendered figures and liquid, abstract forms, creating a visual rhythm that echoes the tension between control and chaos. Through these shifting forms, Osanyintolu considers the emotions and compulsions that mark our inner and social lives: gluttony, desire, violence, tenderness, the absurd.

The works extend beyond the page. The Agogo Àmò, a traditional Yoruba bell used in ritual and spiritual ceremony, is a key conceptual reference in the show. In Yoruba culture, the sound of the Agogo Àmò is used to signal presence or repel it, to call a gathering or to warn passersby to disperse. This tension between seen and unseen, between assembly and dispersal, is echoed in the soundscape composed by the artist, which draws from the bell’s tonal quality to layer the space with echoes of ritual and reverence.

The Escapist Nature of Things is also an ode to the medium itself. Osanyintolu began experimenting with ink on paper during the pandemic, an intuitive, almost meditative turn from oil on canvas. This transition, reminiscent of idle sketches, mirrors the act of mental drift: those moments when the body is physically present, but the mind is escaping into interior landscapes. The result is a body of work that is both playful and poignant, tethered to real emotion and social critique, but constantly shifting form.

Throughout the exhibition, we witness a spectrum of emotional and visual movement, from red backgrounds evoking feverish intensity to white expanses suggestive of presence. One striking work depicts a figure on a red cliff lassoing another form below, its meaning suspended between gesture and intention.

The exhibition closes on a gentle note: an ocean scene, loosely based on a joyful beach day with friends, where Black forms wade through blue waters and two embrace in a kiss. A tender image of ease and togetherness, where play, connection, and escape collide in a dreamlike moment of lived experience.

The artist draws inspiration from sources as varied as 100 Artists’ Manifestos, a book compiling statements from avant-garde movements like Dada and Surrealism, and Fantastic Planet (1973), a surreal animated film that explores control and resistance through alien allegory. These references, like the work itself, refuse easy binaries. Instead, they reflect the artist’s deep interest in contradiction and his commitment to experimentation across form, medium, and thought.

About the Artist
Timilehin Oludare Osanyintolu (b. 2002) is a multimedia artist and art facilitator based in Lagos, Nigeria. His practice spans drawing, sound, scent, and sculpture, often engaging themes of surrealism, absurdity, play, and escape. He is a founding member of Ala Praxis, a research-driven artist collective exploring the intersections of culture, ecology, and technology.

Internationally, Osanyintolu’s work has been exhibited at Boomer Gallery (London, 2020), the Nomascape project (Chicago, 2020), ART-TO-GO (Basel, 2023), and in Sound Laboratory, a group exhibition by Foreign Objekt and the PostHuman Art Network (Berlin, 2023). In 2024, he participated in the S+T+ARTS4AFRICA artist residency in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, where his collective Ala Praxis investigated the socio-ecological impacts of sand mining on coastal communities.

His accolades include the Foreign Objekt Research Residency, European Cultural Academy Scholarship, and being a semi-finalist for the Access ART X Prize. His work and curatorial engagements have garnered attention for their sincerity, experimentation, and fluid engagement with both material and meaning.