This publication brings together texts by Oladélé Ajiboyé Bamgboyé, an artist born in 1963 in Odu-Eku, Nigeria, and based since 1996 in London. The book appears on the occasion of the monographic exhibition dedicated to his work, that took place at Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art (April 28 – June 22, 2000). Far from any retrospective desire, the exhibition ranged freely through the most characteristic themes of the artist’s activity, bringing them into public view for the first time in all their breadth and complexity.
Bamgboyé’s texts exemplify two essential notions: one is ethical, the other programmatic. Both tend frequently to interweave, shaping the position of the artist not only with respect to the system of art – the systematic articulation of the grammars of perception and the readings of the world that surrounds us – but also with respect to other types of events, facts that have been influencing the artist’s practice and the interpretation of his work.
The programmatic aspect of his writings has been related to the thematic leaps that had taken place in his work during the last ten years until the exhibition, spanning the shifts in its content and aims. Indeed, the evolutions in the media used, corresponded to an evolution in the central intention; and this has been the rising awareness of the power exerted by the surrounding environment over the conventions of perception, the influence of a technological – or technical – change in the construction of the image of the world that we form as individuals.