BOOTH 10
For the 10th anniversary of Art X Lagos, Wunika Mukan Gallery presents Stars Fell on Lagos, a solo exhibition by Nigerian-British artist Ṣọlá Olúlọ̀de. This presentation marks the artist’s first solo exhibition in Nigeria, a homecoming that traces her ongoing dialogue between ancestry, imagination, and the transcendent power of Black representation. Olúlọ̀de’s work exists between craft and dreamscape, where indigo-dyed textiles, oil paint, and delicate beading come together to explore the mythic possibilities of form, beauty, and becoming.
In Stars Fell on Lagos, Olúlọ̀de turns her gaze skyward, creating a cosmos where Black bodies shimmer as celestial beings: athletes, spirits, and dreamers suspended in an indigo firmament. Across seventeen paintings ranging in scale from intimate portraits to large, immersive canvases, she constructs a visual mythology that connects the earthly and the divine. Drawing from Yoruba adire dyeing traditions, Olúlọ̀de uses hand-tied and batik techniques alongside oil paint and intricate beading to build constellations of light and texture. Each work evokes both the ritual precision of craft and the expansive reach of imagination, inviting viewers into a space where mysticism and materiality coexist.
Her recent exploration of spirituality and mythology began with a rediscovery of traditional Yoruba dyeing patterns, particularly Oniwaro ati osupa, meaning “the moon and the stars.” From these motifs, she imagined figures traversing the night sky and transformed the pattern into a narrative of transcendence. The artist’s celestial muses—Simone Biles, Venus and Serena Williams, Mo Farah, Flo-Jo, Sha’Carri Richardson, Gabby Douglas, and Jordan Chiles—embody the beauty, power, and endurance of Black excellence. Rendered in flowing gestures and enveloped in the deep blues of indigo, they appear not only as Olympians of the body but also as icons of spiritual grace. In some works, Olúlọ̀de adorns her painted surfaces with hand-beaded constellations, adding a tactile luminosity that makes the paintings glint and breathe, each one a fragment of the cosmos.
Within Olúlọ̀de’s broader practice, Stars Fell on Lagos marks a synthesis of historical reflection and material experimentation. Her continued engagement with indigo connects her to a lineage that extends across continents—a color and a craft deeply rooted in Nigerian heritage yet shared by many global cultures. The artist’s dialogue with modernist Nigerian painters and the textile traditions that informed their work reveals her interest in bridging art-historical lineages with her European training, producing a language that is both personal and transnational.
The labor-intensive processes of dyeing and beading introduce rhythm and ritual into her studio practice, operating as meditative acts that recall ancestral methods of making. These gestures transform the process into a site of embodied knowledge, where history, material, and emotion coalesce. For Olúlọ̀de, indigo is not merely a color but a conceptual framework—one that connects spirituality, identity, and continuity, situating her work within an ongoing conversation about how Black artists reclaim and reimagine visual traditions in contemporary art.
Stars Fell on Lagos extends Olúlọ̀de’s long-standing interest in identity, community, and intimacy into the realm of the celestial. Presented by Wunika Mukan Gallery, the exhibition situates Blackness within the mythic and the infinite, rooted in the intimate yet reaching toward the universal.
