Osaretin Ugiagbe: A View from Amman

 by Kurt McVey

“The work I do has always revolved around this act of wanting to be seen and also, not wanting to be seen; of being there but not being noticed; sometimes wanting to be noticed and scream out. This is something I’ve always struggled with; this whole feeling of noticing or looking.”

 

What’s in a name? For Osaretin Ugiagbe, the Nigerian-born (1986, Lagos) artist, it’s an invitation to a journey, an ongoing adventure on the road to profound self discovery. It’s also just a name. But like Lagos, the city Ugiagbe called home until moving to the Bronx (New York) when he was 16, names can come with baggage and expectations. Lagos (Portuguese for "lakes") is also the name of a city in Portugal, the mother-country or more specifically, the homonymous coastal town in the Algarve region from which Nigeria’s original 15th century colonizers hailed. Osaretin, in Nigerian, means “God’s strength.” Finding this strength is the trip. 

 

What’s in an accent? Accents are relative, of course, but for the 37-year-old Ugiagbe, his “accent” is something of an audio map, atlas, or sensory chronicle of an individual diaspora still unfolding, an unfinished narrative that only now, with his latest painting exhibition at New York’s Slag Gallery, A View from Amman, allows for a vast and calming moment of reflection; an acknowledgment of true belonging. But to what? To whom? To where? Too complex for a cocktail party exchange perhaps, Ugiagbe’s particular accent can boast strong and subtle flavors of Lagos, Nigeria, of course, including hints of French, British, Portuguese and a host of local African dialects. Outside of colonial traces, Ugiagbe carries subtle hints of subdued Cockney, perhaps from his time at the Royal College of Art in London, where he received his Masters in Art in 2019. Depending on the emotion or topic, one might get flavors from the aforementioned Bronx, itself a melting pot of European, Latin, West African and Caribbean dialects, just to name a few. The Bronx can also boast foundational links to Hip Hop, where the culture in all its forms was birthed, including the language, style, beats, flow, codes, and vibes.

 

In 2017, Osaretin staged a solo, black and white photo exhibition at the Bronx Documentary Center, which he called Unbelonging. That show chronicled a sentiment connected to 15 years of a life split between Nigeria and New York. When Ugiabe was 10, his father left for America and “the dream” after winning a Diversity Lottery exchange contest. But now, with his latest solo exhibition, A View from Amman, which features several, mostly-figurative paintings from Ugiagbe’s 2020 “Bounty” series, the artist is celebrating the notion of togetherness. The “Amman” in the title refers to the Capital City of Jordan, where the artist visited before returning to Baltimore, Maryland, where he currently resides and where he executed the paintings. Where does the accent of white blue-collar Baltimoreans differ from that of African-American Vernacular English? How can Ugiagbe take ownership of these places, languages, Blackness; The Culture? 

 

“It was a place I never thought I would visit,” Ugiagbe says of Jordan’s Amman. “A culture I didn't know much about. I visited yes, but I was also received. I was heard. Someone was waiting for me at the airport and I was hugged. I’m in this foreign place. Not in a hotel, but staying in a guest room in someone’s home. It was this dance of feeling each other out, of knowing somehow your journey will prepare you for the moment, whatever the moment is.”