Nigerian Artist Wins A Texas Museum’s Annual Art Exhibition

A US-based artist, Oluseyi Soyege is one of the six winners of the San Antonio Art League & Museum’s 93rd Annual Juried Art exhibition in Texas, US.

The graduate of Yaba College, Lagos, Nigeria whose artwork A Peek Into The Future was one of the 552 submitted works submitted by over 200 Texan-based artists, is the founder of Ongrounds Arts Gallery in Houston, Texas.

A Peek Into The Future is a fabric and newspaper collage piece that reveals a boy’s imagination of his future life – where he is dressed to nines in a colourful coat and hat.

“Every child at some point in life, looks into the future hoping glimpse what might be the culmination of his or her existence. The eyes of the child in this picture are the giveaway.”

Soyege whose works in general are rooted in synesthesia – the association of something with another thing totally different but based in individuals experience of that thing – using wastes said his foray into fabric collage is a response to urban consumerism and its ensuing pollution problems.

“Recycling of wastes has been wastes has been a front burner in this century. My response to cultivating a clean environment in our citizens is to find artistic use for waste from everyday pollutants like scraps metals and fabrics offcuts. Hence the journey into the nascent world of fabric collage.”

Open April 12 through June 3, 2023, the exhibition is showcasing 64 of the selected artists of the museum’s call for submission.

Speaking of the submitted works for the exhibition, juror Catherine Walworth said, “Judging these works was like sitting on a train and watching the Texas landscape roll past my view. Altogether, it was a wide swathe of artists and perspectives, a window onto a certain time and place, and a lovely, broad field of human conditions. I applaud everyone who entered for putting something new into the world.”

Built in 1896, the San Antonio Art League & Museum is more than 600 works in its diverse and popular, permanent collection including works of notable Texan artists like Robert and Julian Onderdonk, Jose Arpa, Emma Richardson Cherry, E.G Eisenlohr, Martha Mood, Charles Umlauf and Amy Freeman Lee.