Movement and Real Time in the Work of Oladele Ajiboye Bamgboye*

by Odili Donald Odita

Oladele Ajiboye Bamgboye "Celebrate, Panel 5," 1994-97 Duratrans Lightbox

*Originally published in the O. A. Bamgboye exhibition catalogue for CULTERGEST, Lisboa, Portugal, January-March, 1998.

For one in the forefront of current discourses on identity, nationality, and explorations of the self, Oladele Ajiboye Bamgboye's ability to avoid objectification and commodification remains astounding. As an artist, Bamgboye is an extremely sophisticated man who is able to communicate his personal travels in life without pandering to cheap sentiment and an exoticization of himself. And he does so with the resonance and assuredness of one grounded within their specific intent. Born in 1963 in Odo-Eku, Nigeria, and educated in western Europe, Bamgboye's life highlights the experiences of so many of his generation who have come out of non-western origins, whether forced or not, to undergo their formative years living in the west. With regard to his practice, Oladele Bamgboye is an artist who walks a path seldom traveled; one that incorporates his willful desire to exist free from restrictive and objectifying circumstances.

Oladele Bamgboye was born the second of seven children to Salome Bamgboye, a University Lecturer in Business Administration, and Ezra Bamgboye, a University Professor in Business Law. In many close knit societies it is common to be raised by one's extended family, as was the case for Oladele Bamgboye. He spent his early years in Nigeria being brought up by his grandmother and great-grandmother on his mother's side, and his grandfather, Moses, on his father's side. Even at this early time, the artist was exposed to differences through the varying belief systems of his elders; his great-grandmother was a devout Muslim, while his grandfather was a practicing Christian. The bond Bamgboye had developed with his grandfather was to be a profound and lasting one. The many lessons he learned from the elder Bamgboye helped to form the open awareness he utilizes in his work today.1 In 1975 at the age of 12, the artist's family emigrated to Glasgow, Scotland from Nigeria. In 1981 after 6 years in Scotland, his parents eventually moved back to Nigeria, but Bamgboye, 18 years old and still in school, decided to stay in Scotland to finish his studies. He eventually earned his degree in Engineering in 1985 at the University of Strathclyde, in Glasgow. In 1992 Bamgboye was awarded a summer studio residency at Banff in Canada. At the same time he was also awarded another prize, the Richard Hough Prize for Photography, the highest honor of its kind for photography in Scotland. With this coming success, Bamgboye felt the urgent need to make a change in his life. He wanted to leave Scotland. As a succeeding artist in Glasgow, he eventually confronted the glass ceiling of racism in that art world.2 He did not want to be in a place where he would prosper as the token, exotic, black artist next to other Glasgow contemporaries and peers such as Douglas Gordon and Christine Borland.3 He wanted to simply be understood as an artist, first and foremost. So he went to Nigeria at this time, and upon his return, Bamgboye used his Richard Hough prize money to move to Berlin. After a year in Germany, visa problems that typically affect Nigerians worldwide forced him to leave Berlin. He then moved to London, and finding it accommodating to his sensibilities, now makes it his home.

Bamgboye's travel to Nigeria in 1992 was his first time back since his initial emigration to Scotland, 16 years prior. It had been over 10 years since he had seen his parents, and even longer for his siblings and other relatives. His return to Nigeria marked itself as a major turning point in his life as an artist. The experience awoke in Bamgboye the understanding of his fit within the Nigerian/Yoruba society and landscape, and as well, it highlighted his foreign-ness as one who has lived a major portion of their life in the west. This dichotomy of being neither here, nor there, was founded in Europe, and reinforced on his arrival back to his 'homeland.'

Many issues lay rich within the detailed fabric of Oladele Bamgboye's work. Sexuality, the Psychoanalytic, Culture, Identity, and the deconstruction of anthropological myths are at the foundation of his aesthetic discourse. He has gone through much in his life to get to the center of his own identity, and to understand better who he is. Bamgboye has taken it upon himself to stand responsibly behind his actions, and to accept what has been found out after great mediation. His desire to challenge the predictable through his work is clear. This challenge is tremendous, being that one has to put to task even their own accomplishments, in order to continue to make work that lives beyond mediocrity. With his beginning in Engineering, through Photography and onward into Film, Oladele Bamgboye's ambitious and successful march toward the center of purpose and identity has been nothing but an act of tenacious boldness in the face of chance and the mishaps that could occur.

As a working subject, Sexual Identity is made ambiguous and interplayed with an aggressive confrontation on the part of the artist to challenge myths attached to the concept of the Black Male in the west. In particular, Bamgboye was interested early on in his photography to reach a state of Trisexuality.
I am trying to move into a phase of trisexuality. Trisexuality, as the next logical stage that acknowledges the strength, sexuality and spirituality of individual images.4

His body presentation added a lot to his created situations of blurred difference. Exposing his genitals openly, posing in ways that could refer to either gender, and combining this with the visual effects of transparent, layered images made for sexually charged pictures that excite, yet consciously deny consumption of the Black body. Rather, this work brings to the forefront the western preoccupation for eating the Other.

In his photography, Bamgboye's main subject has primarily been himself. His original aim was to be an uncompromising example of one who stands firmly behind the questions and statements he makes.

I concentrate on self-portraiture in order to give myself total control over the image-making process, and ultimately to be directly responsible for the statements that I make in my work.5

The body was used in the artist's early photographic work as a 'site of conflict,' within a 'crisis of meaning.'6 If the body was pictured in some state of unrest-contorted, in action without clear purpose, nor meaning-it was to convey a state of psychological uncomfortability within its existent surroundings. And by sometimes mounting his pictures in light boxes, he addressed the arena of advertising and the exploitation of the Black body within this space.7 Bamgboye also utilizes the normalcy of the domestic as a working elements in his pictures through his staging of the environment for his figures. Whether there be an unmade bed, a clothes covered chair, drape curtains or an unkept table, the mundanity of the interior setting gives stark aesthetic contrast to the contorting, distressed figure running haplessly throughout these spaces. This highlights in particular, the artist's interest in the dichotomy between stillness and action, having one accent the other in their continual, and perpetual exchange.

A technique that the artist has utilized to its best advantage in his photography is the overlaying of the figure and image through a means of multiple-exposure. In some cases, he has exposed his prints up to 4 times to create the hallucinatory effects of time shifts and time overlaps within the still of the single image. Multiple-exposures heighten within the photographs a state of vertigo, non-groundedness, and the defeat of fixed time. In his pictures, events unfold on the spot. His engineering background has been extremely helpful in his mastering the photographic process and utilizing experiment to his advantage. With the work, 'Celebrate,' 1994, Bamgboye shows his ability to confound and overshoot the common, while conveying the overall message as clearly as the light that fills to saturation in this beautiful photograph. This joyous picture is a celebration of his move from black and white to color, a move originally made at Banff in Canada and realized in the works that come at this time in his career.8 The exuberant use of color, of the decorative weaving of red and gold streaming through the picture hallmarks an explosion of life that blinds the space with light. A notion of creative freedom is sharply made present as the artist dances uninhibited, inhabiting this space with his spirit and positive energy.9 It is important to add that Bamgboye had lived with a painter for 10 years before, and during that time became fascinated by the painting process of layering. This in effect, carried over into his photography where he would make sketches to plan ahead for the positioning of his figure in the image-space before shooting the figural transparencies. Like a choreographer, he would compose and arrange his image before the ultimate performance, that being the picture.

Throughout his career as a photographer, one major component jumps out to make itself clear as the thread that runs common within his work. This element is movement. The implication of movement and the connotations it brings to the idea of present-ness are very important in Bamgboye's work. His challenge with photography was how to go against its nature to historicize its subject. His work is not about the western aesthetic notion of still-time made perfect, but about a life being lived and made real. Movement has been used aesthetically and philosophically to push forward this point in Bamgboye's work. Looking over his career, it becomes obvious that he could never have accepted the mental, nor physical state of stillness. Movement, always a present and important component in his work, can be used to explains his natural progression to film.

First, it must be noted that in 1993, Bamgboye won the Gilbenkian Foundation Grant which is given to artists to aid in their switching of mediums. He used this grant to aid in his change over to film.10 He spent this time improving his filmmaking skills and starting different projects in video and film. He also used this time to gaining a conceptual understanding of the form of film, concentrating his focus on the moving image, on sound, and light.

In the short film, 'The Hair, or the Man,' 1994, the protagonist (Bamgboye) is at complete unease with his surroundings. He is kicking, tossing-over, and nearly flipping himself out of bed in his attempts to find sleep. This film is overlaid with a soundtrack from a United States based Black Nationalist rap/poetry group from the 1970's called, The Last Poets. At a particular poignant part, the lead rapper cries out, 'Niggas are scared of revolution....' This could also be interpreted as '...scared of change....' Change is a transformative point that Bamgboye also alludes to over and again in his work. He is always referring to change as a necessary process, if one is to respond to, and adapt to changes that can happen in a life. Another technical overlay in this film are a series of texts that act to create tempo/narrative changes, as well as changes in expectations. The texts that appear at different intervals in the film are the following: 'Fear of the True Self,' and 'Triumph.'11 This film was shown at the ICA in London as part of the Mirage Festival. It was well received there, and went onto strong praise at another festival in Amsterdam. In 'The Hair, or the Man,' Bamgboye displays his strength as he travels into his own interiority. We immediately see what this journey demands of the artist as he moves further inward on film. And without seeming to care for the sanctity of convention, the artist accepts the consequences to be had, and knowledge gained, in his sole pursuit inward.

A more culturally objectified filmwork, 'Homeward Bound,' 1995, exists in many parts, but focuses on his eventful return to Nigeria in 1992, and subsequent returns thereafter. Stylistically, this film incorporates many of the technical discoveries made in his photographic works, only amplified and enlarged. The image screen is split into two with one side containing still images taken in 1992, and on the other side, moving footage taken in 1994. The still images contain a slow and introspective look into his personal relationship with Nigeria. These pictures contain images of family and family friends. Also of Bamgboye with his dreadlocks, or 'Dada' hair, as it is called in Nigeria. We see his transformation in these pictures as he shows us images of his hair being cut short, step by step. The moving images embody an active participation with the landscape- a moving into and becoming one with the local space. The moving pictures open with the viewer riding on the back of a buzzing motorcycle driving through a typical Nigerian roadway with rolling hills and palm trees lining the way. Many other scenes of the natural surroundings are pictured and give a majestic dynamism to a most beautiful landscape. Near the end of the film, we become part of a dance lesson given by a mother to her children. The humor and good nature of life comes through as we see one of the children try to shake their hips as the mother did earlier. In the end we see a very loving and well done work that sensuously delves into the daily life of family, and gives the viewer a sense of the space, as if they were in it themselves. Bamgboye is able to take apart the multiple exposure seen in his earlier still work and make it come to life in his film footage. What was once compressed time now becomes moving time- the compression of time stretched out over real time. And the relationships displayed in this film occur with a greater number and wider array of people than in the one-on-one relationships that occur in the works done prior to this in Glasgow, Scotland. For Documenta 1997, it was requested of Bamgboye to exhibit the section of 'Homeward Bound' that included his uncle, Rueben Ibitoye, talking about his time as a trainee in the German Air Force during the 1960's when the Nigerian Air Force was born.12

There is a fullness of experience that lives in the work of Oladele Ajiboye Bamgboye. One that incorporates all the aspects and particulars of a life having gone through hard questioning toward answers that enlighten and enrichen. The glory of understanding is communicated gracefully by the artist, and with full honesty. We see Bamgboye reach a destination that gets as close to home as one of his generation can get to: one that brings together the essence of where he has been, and where he is going. His life and time in Nigeria was as important as his life in Glasgow, Scotland. Both come together to make up who is now. Without his ability to adapt to change, it is uncertain if Bamgboye could have survived the migration back and forth between the two places during his youth. Oladele Bamgboye is certainly not one scared of revolution/change. On the contrary, he welcomes it completely. In his open invitation, change becomes a central element to his work-a metamorphasis of inner-unease toward rich understanding. His work is an invitation to share in the fruit of knowledge without hierarchy, or judgment. If we are to take Oladele Bamgboye as an example, we can see that in time, understanding may come to us all. We simply have to make our own move toward understanding for it to become real.

Footnotes:
1. Oladele Ajiboye Bamgboye. Artist Statement. 'Kunstlerhaus Bethanien.' Berlin. April 1993. p. 14. [My grandfather] taught me that the environment shaped a person's nature, and that therefore, one's nature is an evolving one. He also taught me to strive for patience and sympathy for another viewpoint, regardless of the differences.

2. Oladele Ajiboye Bamgboye. Telephone Interview. December 17, 1997. Bamgboye wanted to make images that incorporated Black people in them. This was not being done nor was it being dealt with in any way aesthetically in Glasgow. He knew he had to leave if he was going to be able to make the images he wanted to make.

3. Douglas Gordon was awarded the Turner Prize in Art in 1996, the highest honor for the contemporary artist in Great Britain. Christine Borland was a finalist for the Turner Prize in 1997.

4. Oladele Ajiboye Bamgboye. Artist Statement. 1994.

5. Oladele Ajiboye Bamgboye. Artist Statement. 'Self-Evident.' Ikon Gallery. Birmingham, England. 1995.

6. Oladele Ajiboye Bamgboye. Artist Statement. 1995.

7. Oladele Ajiboye Bamgboye. Interview. November-December, 1997. My desire in these works was precisely to formulate a more complicated structuring of the Self/Other relationship. To get away from the notion of the victimized Black body...and move more into challenging representations in advertising through the use of lightboxes.

8. Oladele Ajiboye Bamgboye. Interview. November-December, 1997. For me they mark the pinnacle of my self-portraiture and works constituted from a rather Psychoanalytical notion of the Self and Other. The element of Joy and displaying the warmth that this radiates is a strong part of the work that challenges our notions of that which is external to us.

9. Oladele Ajiboye Bamgboye. Interview. November-December, 1997. Cultural transition is marked by the work 'Celebrate' in a dance heralding a discovery of a new identity arising out of the effects of secondary displacement.

10. Oladele Ajiboye Bamgboye. Artist Statement. In/Sight: African Photographers-1940 to the Present. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. New York, NY. p. 255. 1996.

11. Oladele Ajiboye Bamgboye. Interview. November-December, 1997. It became more important for me to deal with issues beyond the Self and the environment, drawing on my appreciation of the power relationships of Self and Other. These are the aims of my filmwork.

12. Oladele Ajiboye Bamgboye. Interview. November-December, 1997. 'Homeward Bound' was originally intended for BBC Television as a 1/2 hour long program, but it was adapted upon request for Documenta and its 100 days of speakers.