Bwo Art is pleased to announce that Bara Sketchbook has created a new body of work. This new series comes after his widely acclaimed series Ajayi’s People which was featured in group exhibitions across Africa, Europe and North America this year. 

The singularity of Bara Sketchbook’s work lies in his Nigerian and Sierra Leonean heritage which he tries to incorporate each time in his portraits as he explores the inwards and outwards feelings of his subjects. Inspired by his own personal life and stories that marked him, Bara Sketchbook’s new body of work which is yet to be titled is a poetic and visual depiction of human fragility.

In the artist’s synesthetic mind, fragility takes the form of green skin hues on human bodies. With his meticulous brush, Bara Sketchbook revives beauty and the resilience in his subjects struck by vulnerability and pain. They are positioned against an abstract background on which colorful pigments collide into each other to create a harmonic and almost symphonic musical partition that highlights the challenges each of them endured and have overcome throughout their lifetime, forging their character. Inspired by Joseph’s coat of many colors from the Bible’s Book of Genesis, Sketchbook dresses his subjects in clothes which reveal the geometry of light as an attempt to attenuate their vulnerability and stress out that regardless of the circumstances, they remain adorned.

From October 28 to 31, Bara Sketchbook will be presenting new works at FNB Art in Johannesburg during Open City. In November, LouiSimone Guirandou Gallery will be unveiling some of his new works at Art X Lagos (November 4-7).