J.D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere created images with an exacting eye. This exhibition illuminates how his commitment to finding beauty in the everyday produced a nuanced portrait of a place. Spanning over six decades, his photographs expand our understanding of art, and exemplify both art’s power and the artist’s role in bearing witness to their time.
From the outset of his career, his explorations of the medium’s formal and creative possibilities led him beyond traditional documentary image-making. Despite material costs, Ojeikere’s diligence helped to refine a signature photographic vocabulary. It was rooted in his keen understanding that portraiture benefited from spatial composition and abstraction.
Ojeikere’s acumen extended to his thematic-based archive, a repository of thousands of never-exhibited images. This focused survey examines how his photographic vocabulary developed in tandem with his overarching attunement to Nigeria’s physical and human geography, driven by his abiding interest in documenting the nation’s vast resources.
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
Johnson Donatus Aihumekeokhai Ojeikere, known as J.D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere, documented significant moments in Nigerian history with great passion and discernment. Throughout his career, he focused on the social, political and cultural transformations occurring during Nigeria’s transition from a colonial state to an independent republic. His formal investigations, documentary work and various commercial endeavors captured the unique atmosphere and élan of Nigeria during a period of great euphoria and ambivalence. Practicing since the early 1950s, Ojeikere was a leading artist of his generation, devoted to image-making, the history of his country, and the critical possibilities of the photographic medium. Over a career spanning six decades, he remained committed to capturing photographic "moments of beauty."