For Mobolaji Ogunrosoye, a collage begins with a conversation.
Ogunrosoye’s works develop as a series of processes continually informing one another: a conversation shapes a photograph, and the photograph is molded and layered into unique collage works, becoming another way of holding on to what has been shared. The artist’s own journey from architecture into full-time artistic practice has involved repeatedly questioning the path that had been set out for her. Speaking to other women becomes, in part, a way of thinking through these questions alongside them.
There is no photograph without a story being shared first, however a conversation rarely produces a single, complete account of a person. Instead, understanding accumulates gradually: perhaps through what is first assumed about a person, from the way they walk, or talk. Then what is said, and the expressions that accompany the telling. Ogunrosoye's collages operate in much the same way. A face is assembled from fragments, ultimately resembling its original subject, but nevertheless far from it – something wholly new.
In France, Ogunrosoye’s conversations with women often returned to ideas of home, belonging and the experience of leaving one place to begin again elsewhere. In Lagos, she finds that many of the women she speaks to are negotiating another question: how to find and use their voices. Their experiences are different, but Ogunrosoye teases out pearls of wisdom for her own journey, impressions that eventually are crystallised into the shapes and shadows of her distinctive three-dimensional collage works. The result is a body of work in which the act of listening becomes a form of making, and the resulting pieces develop into something more than simply an image of a woman - rather, it’s an encounter with her presence, her inner self, made tangible.
Ogunrosoye's background in architecture continues to shape the way she thinks about form and space. Before becoming a full-time artist, she worked within an architecture practice where she was involved in installation design, and initially began making collages alongside this work, creating colourful, graphic digital compositions depicting living spaces and physical environments.
The eventual shift to full-time artistic practice was experimental and intuitive. She began to ask what would happen if the collage had greater depth, thickness and physical presence. Paper was layered; surfaces were weathered with coffee grains; and her materials became increasingly tactile. Ogunrosoye began to experiment with projecting works from the wall, creating shadows that change as the viewer moves around them. This relationship between light, depth and movement is central to the experience of her work. The shadows cast by the pieces move and change according to the position of the viewer and the light surrounding the work. The layers to her pieces are conceptual, as well as physical: there is the photographed figure, the physical layers that construct her, and the shifting shadow that extends her presence into the space around her, akin to another being in the room.
Ogunrosoye is particularly attentive to the way photography can carry a story, and how an image can become something more layered than a record of a person. Her practice sits within a contemporary moment in which artists are increasingly pushing collage beyond the traditionally graphic or two-dimensional image. Christa David, a contemporary artist whose practice moves between collage, assemblage, painting and photography, is one example of this expanded approach. David’s work is similarly rooted in stories of identity, home, belonging and the experiences of Black people, using collage as a way of bringing different fragments, histories and perspectives into conversation.
Ogunrosoye continues to ask questions that are both personal and expansive: How do we become who we are? How do the places we inhabit shape us? What do we inherit from the women who came before us? And how do we learn to speak in a voice that is our own? The women in her work are participants in an ongoing process of looking, listening and making.
Her practice remains open-ended. She continues to experiment with materials, still discovering what collage can become when it is allowed to move beyond the flat image, but this is part of the work's vitality. Ogunrosoye's language has emerged from her ability to pay attention - to materials, to light, to space, and most importantly, to people.
