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Painter, sculptor, Amarachi Okafor comes to town with a 20th-year retrospective at Red Door Gallery, Lagos

* ‘Beauty across Nigeria. Beauty in Africa. Beauty across the whole world’

Amarachi Okafor

TWENTY years into her illustrious practice as a professional artist, Amarachi Okafor steps out boldly from October 29 in a retrospective exhibition at the Red Door Gallery, 51 Bishop Oluwole Street, Victoria Island, Lagos.

Titled: Beauty, Mercy, Kindness, and Love, the exhibition of paintings and sculptures, will run till November 19. The formal opening on Saturday 29th will be heralded by a cocktail at 4pm.

In her artist’s statement, Amarachi wrote: “My 20th-anniversary retrospective exhibition is a glimpse at the evolution of my practice through the years, the growth of my processes and scope, the sharpening of my focus and, perhaps, it is an opening to a conversation about the future of my work in all of its dimensions: the making, the curating, the research, the documenting and archiving… the cultural production…”

Full text of the statement reads:

TWO decades of experimentation have culminated in an interesting array of mediums, materials and techniques, some results of which you can now see at this show, fondly themed Announcing Beauty, Mercy, Kindness, and Love

Over a 20-year-long practice, I have made work with objects, words and events, encouraging myself and everyone to produce, embrace and accommodate joy in ourselves and let this shine through to our neighbours.

All these years, I have in my work enjoyed tactility, transformation, and play – as I have continually found ways to explore a variety of mediums and processes whilst staying with the same or related topics -.

It has been a very rewarding journey locating methods for pursuing research, audience participation and collaboration as part of my processes for making art; whilst studying and embedding tangible and visual notions of structure, design, and architecture.

Announcing Beauty, Mercy, Kindness and Love- is a metaphor and a call for human connection…, for building…up…, for garnering that strength which is almost only found in unity!

This unity that is also situated in diversity, for the sake of peace – delivering beauty to us.

Beauty across Nigeria. Beauty in Africa. Beauty across the whole world.

My 20th anniversary retrospective exhibition is a glimpse at the evolution of my practice through the years, the growth of my processes and scope, the sharpening of my focus and, perhaps, it is an opening to a conversation about the future of my work in all of its dimensions: the making, the curating, the research, the documenting and archiving …, the cultural production…

Join me, please, at RDG, in Lagos, to celebrate 🎉. I really would love to see you, and I hope you can make it here!

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