Praise’s visual poetry stirs collectors’ interest
A solo art exhibition by Praise Sanni-Adeniyi tagged Between A Prayer and A Song, which opened last Saturday at Rele Gallery, Lagos did not only stir viewers’ curiosity but also
A solo art exhibition by Praise Sanni-Adeniyi tagged Between A Prayer and A Song, which opened last Saturday at Rele Gallery, Lagos did not only stir viewers’ curiosity but also reinforces conversation between mind and mental spaces using colourful paintings laced with visual poetry. Featuring 15 works, the artist who is a trained lawyer and an alumnus of Rele Art Foundation Residency (2023), works with painting and writing. Her works largely contemplate the complexities of human existence, especially the mental considerations that emerge from it, initiating conversations on the mind and mental space. Her paintings are characterized as visual poetry, drawing the viewer to dialogue with the questions she asks through her paintings.
Among her paintings, which are oil on canvas, include Do you see us Lord? Now, I lay myself bare, Praying for rain, Searching for God in the shadows and Sometimes without anchor. Others are Which one of you will save me tonight? (i-iii), I spend all these nights wondering why and Lord make me a chrysanthemum.
According to the Curator of the exhibition, Wana Udobang, the title of Praise Sanni-Adeniyi’s solo exhibition, Between A Prayer and A Song is taken from a line in a poem written by the artist herself. Assuming the form of a litany, the poem utilises repetition as a distressed call for clarity, a clawing in supplication to the divine, becoming a point of departure for this body of work.
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“The figures in the paintings are not new to Sanni-Adeniyi’s oeuvre. This time, they reprise their role with fragmented and fluid postures. Inertia serves as a metaphor for an ongoing state of uncertainty. Their eyes, weighed by rumination, ambiguous interiors become emotional and psychological landscapes, often in flux. The installation extends the works into a space for contemplation.
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“These works explore the existential angst of coming of age, the complexities of place making, the tension between the tangible and intangible, the aftershock of rumination on the body.
With this exhibition, the artist asks ‘what does it mean to exist and occupy space in these fraught times?’ Between A Prayer and A Song is its own purgatory, a kind of oscillation, a waiting and a negotiation. On one hand a desperate meditation for clarity and in another, a melody of hope and reprieve. Between A Prayer and A Song will run till April 18th.
Sanni-Adeniyi has a first class degree from both the Faculty of law, University of Lagos and the Nigerian Law School and she has participated in a number of group exhibitions including Journeys (2023) SMO Contemporary Art, Rele Young Contemporaries Exhibition (2024) Rele Lagos, Places we call home (2024) A white space creative agency, The Lagos Salon (2024), Rele Lagos and Her Gaze, A woman’s truth (2025), Rele London.
She was named a Young Contemporary in 2024 and in 2016, she was awarded the Chevron National Art Award. Her works are part of notable private and state art collections.
She currently lives and works in Lagos, Nigeria.
