Future, Past: a solo exhibition by Tejumola Adenuga
An evocation of time and place: Tejumola Adenuga’s debut exhibition at Art Twenty One is a transcendental reflection of home
Set in a time both past and in the future, Future Past is an exploration of a small village in Western Nigeria, looked after by a divine presence in Yoruba cosmology whose primary occupation is to accord creativity to its inhabitants. Welders, painters, cobblers and dressmakers; these ordinary denizens move through their days with an abundance of creativity, freedom and an unbridled, swaggering focus on a bright future.
In a time both in the future and in the past, one of the inhabitants of the village return to the place where it all began for him and makes an unexpected discovery: nothing has changed. Residents of this village still live happily with their families, livestock, and extended family; they still possess that sure-footedness with which everything seemed not only alive, but possible.
To investigate the source of this village's triumph, he who has returned must confront the day-to-day lives of the village's inhabitants - who they are, where they go to for hope, what it takes for them to survive; young men and women in whom so many hopes are stored. In looking at them with intent, tenderness and practicality, his search for answers uncovers one of the village's long-kept secret: a small river between two hills, on the verge of drying up.
