An Interview with Wole Lagunju

Thembeka Heidi Sincuba

Wole Lagunju (b.1966) is a renowned visual artist from Oshogbo, Nigeria, known for blending traditional Yoruba art with contemporary Western influences. He graduated in Fine Arts and Graphic Design from the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University) in 1986. His style combines intricate paintings of Gelede masks with modern Western depictions of women, exploring themes of power, femininity, and womanhood, while critiquing African colonisation and the decolonisation process. Lagunju's work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Ebony Curated Gallery in Cape Town and the University of Texas, Austin. 

Thembeka Heidi Sincuba speaks with the artist for ARAK.

What made you fall in love with art or decide that this is a path that you want to take? 

I grew up in Oshogbo in Western Nigeria. In the early seventies, it was like a hotbed for contemporary art. At that time, we had some expatriates, namely Ulli Beier (art critic), Georgina Beier (artist), and Susanne Wenger (artist and cultural promoter), who started this series of workshops in Oshogbo with some itinerant youngsters. These workshops later blossomed into an art movement called the Oshogbo Art Movement. 

It was around this time that I was growing up, and my father, who was a pharmacist at the time, had his pharmacy located next door to the gallery that had materialised from Ulli, Georgina, and Susanne’s activities. At the same time, there was a very popular Yoruba playwright, Duro Ladipo, who had merged with Ulli Beier in literary and dramatic activities in Oshogbo.  So, his house was where my father's shop was located. And next door was the popular gallery called Mbari Mbayo Art Gallery. 

So, whenever I was coming home from high school, I would stop by my father's shop, spend some time with him, and then wander into the gallery to see the workshops and exhibitions by artists from abroad, including the United States and other parts of the world. That was how I grew up, surrounded by artists in this gallery and the house. That’s how I got interested in the arts, and it was how I made up my mind that, when I had the opportunity, I would go to school to study fine arts.

Your dad being a pharmacist, did he have any resistance?

Definitely, yes! You hit the nail on the head. He was very resistant because his understanding of the arts was shaped by seeing these itinerant youngsters having fun around him. They were always playing checkers, dancing, and walking around, drawing some crazy pictures. That was my father's experience of the arts at that time. So, when I said I wanted to go and study fine arts, he was very resistant. He didn't like it at all. 

He was of the opinion that artists were just like layabouts and didn’t have any work to do. But I convinced him by telling him that the kind of art I wanted to study was the educated arts, like graphic arts, where you could work in a publishing house, in advertising, and do different things that were entirely different and outside his own experience.

Did the need to prove yourself to your father influence your need to prove yourself in the professional world, especially in the West? 

Definitely. The regretful thing is that my father is not alive today. Before he died, I had managed to have quite a career back home in Nigeria. I would say I was successful to a certain degree, and he was able to see that. But the need to prove it to my father always stuck with me. However, I didn’t initially go into painting and studio practice. I was actually working in a press house, in a publishing house, at the Daily Times newspaper in Nigeria. At that time, the Daily Times was the biggest publishing house in West Africa. 

I was a cartoonist, and frequently, some of my cartoons or illustrations would appear on the front page of the newspaper. And those were the kind of papers that my father would read, and he would see these illustrations or drawings on the front page of the newspaper. So he was quite aware that this was something that you could call being successful in your career. And he was proud of me, you know, but before that, there was quite an experience of trying to make it. And at that time, that pressure, like you said, was always there. 

How do you feel about the way people interpret the various themes and symbolism in your work?

I think what informs my practice more broadly is Yoruba culture, Yoruba culture, patriarchy, and at the same time, women and the role they play. There’s often a conflict between these two roles. So, when people ask me about my work, I like to quickly tell them that a lot of it stems from Yoruba culture. Many of the experiences people see in my work are sometimes reflections of their own experiences. Most of the time, I don't like to tell people what I want them to see. Instead, I prefer to share what informs my practice. And that is the role of women and the role of men in Yoruba culture.  

Is your approach to developing a style intentionally aimed at bridging the Western context, while also ensuring it resonates with people on the continent and feels authentic to them?    

Yes, definitely. You know, it wasn't just something that happened all of a sudden, in two ways, it fell into place at the same time, it's something that was also deliberate. How did I begin to do that? What happened was when I came to the United States, my art practice was typically based on iconic representations and abstract representations of Yoruba culture. But after some time, I began to see that the audience, being in a place where I found myself, didn’t really understand what I was trying to do.

They didn't understand some of these deep-seated beliefs, cultural aspects, and imagery. So, I wanted to bridge that gap. I began to find ways to merge, juxtapose, transpose, or create some kind of hybridisation between the two cultures, which I reasoned could bring my work to a broader audience.

Do you think that studying Fine Art and Graphic Design at the University of Ife contributed to your ability to translate your work to a wider audience?

Yes, that experience as a graphic designer contributes to what I do. It adds so many layers to my final design visuals. I deliberately plan these images sometimes. I've spent many years making imaginary paintings, but recently, my graphic design experience has contributed because sometimes I manipulate images from popular culture, and when I do, these images inform my final sketch for what I paint.

Do you think you could give some examples of icons from popular culture that you have used or prefer to use? 

Yes, I've used icons from Jeff Koons' paintings, and floral imagery from the work of William Morris, and I also use what I call "found flowers" from popular culture, and I find ways to incorporate them into my designs.

How do you approach the idea of legacy or the long-term impact of your work?

Sometimes, no matter how much you've done, you still look at what you have yet to do and question yourself. Have you done enough? Have you communicated the message enough? I'm still seeing things I haven’t even touched on yet, you know? Artists are human, and there's that element of doubt that always plagues them. I’ve read that from the experiences of other artists, and I’ve felt that myself. Honestly, I can't pinpoint what it means to have done enough. I can only focus on what I still have to do, and whether I have enough time to do it. 

I’ll keep creating until I don’t have the energy anymore. To say at any given time in my career that I’ve done enough is such a hard question—it’s hard for me to picture that. Sometimes you look at what you’ve done, and there’s that element of the artistic experience that just questions you, asking if you've done enough to leave your mark. But then you look at all these connections, and it feels like a form of validation. That gives you the energy and positivity to keep going.

Who are some of the icons who have inspired you and changed the way you see art?

The people who have inspired me are some of these expatriate teachers who came to Oshogbo. For example, Ulli—Ulli is not an artist; he's more of a writer. But his wife, Georgina Beier, and his former wife before he married Georgina—Susanne Wenger—are some of the artists I look up to as my inspirations.

How do you see your work contributing to, or diverging from, broader narratives within African art?

Well, I believe in African art and I believe that I practice a form of African art. My ideas and concepts are largely influenced by Yoruba traditional art and design. The Yoruba have a concept called Òjù Òna, meaning "an eye for design”, with Òjù meaning “eye". In my own way, I have developed a concept called Òna Mentality, which refers to a mental attitude towards using the Yoruba concept of visual design. So, totally, my work is informed by African art. That is what I practice, and when it came to a point, I had to export these concepts to a wider audience. 

What I did was merge these concepts with a broader contemporary art context, which uses iconography from Western culture, finding ways to juxtapose, challenge, and create a new form of hybrid art that informs a wider audience about traditional art. So, I’m a believer in that concept of African design, because if the Chinese can have art, if the Indians can have art, why would we Africans not have our own kind of art too?

How do you see the relationship between the African artist and the global collector?

It depends on the kind of African art, I would say, and on how far you're taking the concept of African art versus more of contemporary art, and that's where you find the collectors—collectors of contemporary art… But yes, the lines blur. It's a product meant to exist within the context and space of contemporary art.

At a certain stage, artists don't have control because of something called the secondary market. Yes, when you find your work in that space at a certain time, it's very hard to exercise any control over who owns your work. That's something I'm still grappling with in my own way. I do believe that traditional African art, in my thinking, has to evolve. It's not something that is static; it's not something that's always going to be in the past. It must be for the future and the present.

How would you relate your work in the ARAK Collection to your practice as a whole?

The first time I heard about them was when a friend of mine sent me a picture from that collection. He had travelled to Qatar, where I believe the ARAK Collection is based, and one way or another, he sent me the picture. That was when I was able to realise that the particular work was part of a collection belonging to an institution called the ARAK Collection. Later, I started seeing pictures on the web and discovered a website, which allowed me to confirm where these works were located. I've read about them, and I know that it's actually a big collection.

If I had the chance I’d want to be in Qatar, definitely. It's somewhere I could seek out to go and see what they do. Because if my friend can enter that collection and see my work there, then it's something I should be able to do as well.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

‍Cover image: Wole Lagunju, Lady II, 2017. Ink on paper, 23 × 30 cm.

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