The Norval Sovereign African Art Prize 2022 Benefit Auction | Hosted by Sotheby’s

Modupeola Fadugba

Black Water Pillars

Lot Closed

February 22, 05:08 PM GMT

Estimate

30,000 - 40,000 USD

Lot Details

Description

Modupeola Fadugba

Nigerian

b.1985

Black Water Pillars

signed and dated 2020 (lower left)

acrylic, ink and graphite on burned canvas

122 by 92cm., 48 by 36¼in.

Please be aware of the Conditions of Sale when bidding. As a benefit auction, there is no buyer’s premium charged. The only additional costs due to the winning bidder are applicable sales tax and shipping. Works auctioned are sold “as is,” and condition reports are included with lot descriptions as available. In-person previews of the auction artwork will be available at Norval Foundation at 4 Steenberg Rd, Tokai, Cape Town, 7945, South Africa from 26 January – 22 February, Monday to Sundays 9 AM – 5:00 PM (Closed on Tuesdays). Please note that while this auction is hosted on Sothebys.com, it is being administered by Norval Foundation (“the museum”), and all post-sale matters (inclusive of invoicing and property pickup/shipment) will be handled by the museum. As such, Sotheby’s will share the contact details for the winning bidders with the museum so that they may be in touch directly post-sale.

This work has been kindly donated by the artist

Modupeola Fadugba (b. 1985, Togo) is an artist who tells triumphant stories of swimmers and lifeguards from Accra, Abuja, Lagos, Dakar, Philadelphia and Harlem. Stories beyond survival – stories of community, learning, teaching, togetherness and play. In an attempt to capture the representative group and individual portraits, her paintings have moved from abstraction to realism, spilled over into poems and performance, been experienced through documentary film and immersive installation.

Black Water Pillars illustrates the process of remembrance, back to childhood memories in post-genocide Rwanda and reminds Fadugba of how much Rwanda’s story has changed in her lifetime. In Black Water Pillars, the aesthetics of orientation and alignment— or lack thereof— reflect Chinua Achebe’s “falling apart” of structures. The tension between order and entropy, the past and future of a nation. As Nigeria ‘reclaims’ the post-colonial, post-war narrative can it revert to ancestral culture or must it borrow wisdom from other countries?