Monilola Olayemi Ilupeju V. & Blue Tree, 2024

V. & Blue Tree is an oil on cowhide painting stretched on a wooden frame. In the foreground, slightly off center, sits a young woman who leans forward and clutches her wrist, as if nervous. Behind her the wallpaper depicts a bamboo forest and in the right-hand corner of the room stands a blue tree, which is balanced by an antique lamp in the immediate left-hand foreground of the painting. As one moves closer to the painting, one can see cryptic messages, carefully hand-carved with a soldering iron, written into the far-right wall.

The painting is based on a portrait of Ilupeju’s mother as a young woman, taken at a moment in her life when her emigration from Nigeria to the USA had been successful and a new, promising future seemed about to unfold. The artist chose this key moment in her family history to raise questions about the inherent unknowability of one’s life path and the extent to which wishful thinking about life in the Global North conceals a more complicated reality. Alienation is not only evident in the composition of the work, but also in the young woman's awkward posture and facial expression. It is emphasized by the shadowy rendering of a blue tree, which lingers in the room like a talisman or premonition.