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Tracing Blackness through its many migrations and manifestations, the interdisciplinary artist Oluseye blends the ancestral with the contemporary and the physical with the spiritual. Inspired by merindinlogun, a Yoruba divination ritual, Oluseye presents a new installation that illustrates the spiritual, mythological, and biographical elements that have shaped his worldview and art practice.
In Yoruba culture, cowrie shells symbolize wealth and prosperity and are used by diviners to communicate with ancestors and receive guidance. Paying homage to that cultural practice and his own narratives, Oluseye presents 16 large-scale bronze cowrie shells, resting atop a hand-carved divination tray.
The artist would like to acknowledge funding support from the Ontario Arts Council and the Government of Ontario for the making of this artwork.
Lead Sponsor
Oluseye (b.1986, London, UK) is a Nigerian-Canadian artist. Oluseye embraces Blackness as divine, fluid, and unfixed, unbound by time, space, and geographies. His practice blends the ancestral with the contemporary and the physical with the spiritual. Oluseye has exhibited at the Museum of the African Diaspora, San Fransisco (2024), Daniel Faria Gallery, Toronto (2024), Southern Guild Gallery, Cape Town (2023), the Gardiner Museum, Toronto (2023), Albright-Knox Museum, Buffalo (2022), Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto (2021), Agnes Etherington Art Center, Queen’s University, Kingston (2021) and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (2015). In 2022, his first public art commission, Black Ark, was installed in Toronto’s Ashbridge’s Bay Park, and in Fall 2024 will embark on a tour of the Maritimes with stops at the Owens Art Gallery and The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. His first permanent public sculpture will be unveiled in Toronto in 2026.
