Ṣé ALÁFíà ni?
Exhibition Text for As Loud as Freedom
September 17, 2026

​​In the cacophonous streets of Lagos, a voice emerges saliently from the noise carrying the Yoruba expression for “it is peace”: Àlàáfíà ni.

The common phrase is an affirmation of wellness and good health. As a young Canadian of Nigerian (Yoruba) descent, its use feels ironic to me in moments that, on the surface, appear chaotic. Yet, if you know, you know: that loudness, as a Black & African cultural marker, is a vital tool for self-determination, just as much as it is a constituent of pride and celebration.

Freedom is not bred in silence. Such is evidenced by Africa’s major era of independence throughout the 1960s and ’70s, when our peoples demanded liberation from European extractive politics and commodifying strongholds on our land and labour. Throughout this time, the rebellious African voice continued to assert herself in protest against toxic leadership in the newly configured nation-states. For instance, peace continued to elude Nigeria even after the new and shiny British-style constitutions granted new levels of independence in 1960 and 1963, in a way that prevented a sustained feeling of freedom. The trouble of political corruption and the cycling between democratic, military, and civilian rule maintained instability. Meanwhile, the seeds of regional-tribal mistrust, tended ever-so carefully by the imperial hand, grew into the violent Biafran civil war (1967-1970) and the associated famine.

The soft potential of peace, then, corresponds with a loud fight for freedom, insofar as the experience of each is limited by the absence of the other. I have come to terms that the peace of freedom sounds different to everyone, and is influenced by the pre-existing conditions of where it is sought. I have found peace in the booming embrace of loudspeakers and in the roaring waves of a shoreline. The uses of loudness may be distinguished from the futility of noise: In some cases, its energetic depth contains precious power.

~

Àgbà kì í wà ní ojà kí orí ọmọ tuntun wó.
An elder must be moved to correct the tilted neck of a baby.

As Loud as Freedom is rooted in an ongoing conversation between the Toronto-based African cultural agency Sample Chief and the Lagos-based senior visual artist Lemi Ghariokwu. Though firmly planted in his home country, Lemi has such a warm eagerness to connect and inspire the youth of our community through transnational correspondence. The compound knowledge cultivated through intergenerational exchange can become the substance from which we can imagine new ways to thrive, building upon the old ways of survival. To expand on the perspectives gained through Lemi’s artistic legacy, this exhibition invites participation from four Turtle Island based artists of Nigerian descent: Jibola Fagbamiye, Ehiko Odeh, Soji “Shakes” Oyinsan, and Chukwudubem Ukaigwe.

Lemi Ghariokwu’s vocation to circulate politically-charged art spans more than five decades. As a self-taught painter, illustrator, and designer, his works often marry text and image to promote African pride and challenge imperial suprematism and social injustice. His exhibition history across Nigeria, Ghana, the United Kingdom, and the United States, spans over 20 years, and his gouache, ink, and pastel painting on paper, Anoda Sistem (2002), is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MOMA).

As Loud as Freedom is the first exhibition of Lemi Ghariokwu’s work in Canada. We are grateful to have worked with Lemi to produce ALAF Special Edition Prints (1 of 1) of six of his works.

The conditions of international politics continue to stifle the cross-border movement of both people and objects, with serious instances of dehumanization and disrespect often affecting those travelling to and from Africa in particular. The costs and permissions associated with transportation is a prevalent barrier for institutions, large and small, to presenting original artworks by African artists. We decided to push back at the bureaucratic violence inherent to the oppressive systems that keep us separated: The print edition of Lemi’s works is an unmatched opportunity for our community to appreciate his well-respected contribution to contemporary visual culture, and to access prints produced with the courtesy of the artist.

It all starts with Motherland (1976): Lemi Ghariokwu’s intricately detailed and multivalent composition introduces the themes of independence, liberation from bondage, and cross-national camaraderie. In it, the face of a woman doubles as a map of the African countries whose liberation movements were supported by Nigeria, including Angola, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. The large-scale print matches the impressive scale of the original painting.

Beside Motherland, Ehiko Odeh presents four collages whose colour palette harmoniously carries on the earthy tones, with superimposed scenes of nature, urbanism, fashion, and photography layering disparate temporalities and landscapes. Sacred Nourishment (2022) parallels Motherland, as a sliced map of Africa over a jute-wound arch leads the eye between a dazzle of zebra and a breastfeeding mother. Lightbeaming (2022) is a circular form, connecting images of animal herds to a central human figure who faces into the glowing depths of the composition. Shooting for the Stars (2022) is asymmetrically mounted on the left side of red oak wood. The featured figures point their guns at targets in a rhythmic display of multiplicity and militaristic uniformity. Mounted on cardboard, Coming of age (The prince) (2022) features a central African child, bleeding from his scalp in a circular wound pattern. A gold, ghetto-chic hat rests above the dripping blood. In front of the child is a smaller adult male figure, who wears a professional suit and stands on a chair above an urban African market.

Ehiko’s work echoes the exhibition’s broader aim to illustrate a sense of futurity that is interwoven with the complexities of cultural history. Ehiko shared with me that her improvisational assembly of diverse source images is inspired by the heterogeneity of Nigeria as both concept and nation: “Nigeria is a nation formed through the coming together of many distinct tribes and peoples into a single identity. Sometimes it jams, sometimes it doesn’t.”

~

Igi gogoro máàgún mi lójú, òkèrè la tií wòó.
If I don’t want a long stick to poke me in the eye, I have to look at it from afar.

The curatorial perspective seeks a conscious path towards Afro-centric embodiment, to preemptively avoid the looming, sharp stick of coloniality that could strike the freedom desired here. ALAF aims to boost the volume on the artworks’ voices and visualities of cultural sovereignty, and adopt features of African temporality, such as cyclical experience and shared presence, to embody relational sovereignty.

The time-space of the exhibition takes the form of a musical metaphor: In the essay Independence, highlife, liberation wars: Lagos 1950s and 1960s (2001), musicologist Wolfgang Benders recognizes the philosophical impact of the introduction of LP (long play) records to the African music industry. With each side of a record holding up to 25 minutes of sound (a jump from the previous technological and industry standard of 5 minutes), many artists published songs with extended lengths on a single side of a record. The new technology granted the potential to create in the deep measure of African Time, and disrupt the popularity of bite-sized, radio-bound recordings (Benders, 2001).

The radical Nigerian cult hero and father of the Afrobeat genre, Fela Aníkúlápó Kuti, was one musician who is well known for his expansive recordings. This method gave rise to a hypnotic experience: Long, repetitive instrumental sections pull you into a meditative state, before he openly entrances you with the lyrics of anti-colonial and anti-capitalist truth.

~

A kì í fi iná sí orí òrùlé sùn.
We do not leave fire on the roof and go to sleep.

The two smaller illustration prints by Lemi Ghariokwu, Free Your Mind (1984) and Why Roam (2017) characteristically bring text and image together to express pro-African sentiments. Free Your Mind is a black ink drawing positing that liberation from mental shackles of colonial mentality is the precursor for evading physical bondage. In Why Roam, we see a child traversing a globe that balances on a diagram of enslaved peoples who are crammed into the hold of an imperial ship. Lemi carries the proud African, grounded sentiments of Why Roam on his sleeve. In our first phone call, he firmly stated that though he was open to visiting Canada to participate in this exhibition’s programs (pending an elusive Canadian visa approval), he will never worship North America: He is not enticed by the allure of “Babylon.”

Soji “Shakes” Oyinsan works between Lagos and Toronto in full appreciation of the wealth of knowledge to be encountered back home. The series of Shakes’ paintings in this exhibition emerges from his ongoing research into twinness in Yoruba culture, and his desire to create visual knowledge to share his curiosities with peers across the diaspora. The tri-part family portrait hangs: The paintings Old Soldier (2025) and Old Teacher (2025) are a diptych textured with aṣọ òkè fabric, exploring the dichotomy between the traditional belief that twins share a soul, and the political conditions that can cause them to diverge into distinctly charged social roles. Èṣù lẹ́yìn Ìbejì (2025) illustrates the beliefs around the child born after twins, known to embody a trickster spirit. Kehinde L’o gba Taiwo (Lijadu) (2025) pays homage to the Lijadu Sisters, adorning them in the boldness of traditional patterned dress. The identical twin Afro-soul musicians performed from the mid-1960s through the 1980s to much success in Nigeria.

In the same era, Fela Aníkúlápó Kuti adopted the spirit and knowledge of Black American and African liberation movements to lead a musical crusade, and became one of Africa’s most influential voices of resistance. Chukwudubem Ukaigwe’s oil painting speaks to this history in an imaginatively ultramodern style, so as to illustrate that Fela’s legacy continuously super-charges the pulse of Black culture. We’ll See (2025) is a variegated assembly of stacked, vibrant colours and deep geometric depth. Like the formal elements, the layered cultural references complicate and collapse the painting’s sense of time and space: An inscription on the silhouette of a golden jug and a floating trumpeter invoke the name and album iconography of Fela’s early band, Fela Ransome Kuti and His Koola Lobitos. Deep-blue hair picks surround the trumpeter’s bright yellow background conveying a similar sentiment to how a brick inscribed with “Digable Planets” (referring to the 1980s American hip hop trio) is stacked to surround the Koola Lobitos jug: The futuristic imagination simultaneously builds upon the image of, and safeguards the past.

Lemi Ghariokwu has created over 2000 album covers for more than 100 artists as a graphic designer for several labels such as Polygram Records (Netherlands-Germany) and Kennis Music (Nigeria). He is celebrated for his work as the principal album cover designer for Fela Aníkúlápó Kuti, having created 26 of his 50 covers. Created in close dialogue with Fela’s recordings, the designs highlight the visual culture that is eternally associated with the musical legacy. The synergy between the forms influenced a cultural movement that tied art and music. ALAF presents four of these riotous album covers on an enlarged scale: Ikoyi Blindness (1976), Zombie (1976), J.J.D. Johnny Just Drop (1977), and Beasts of No Nation (1988).

Jibola Fagbamiye and Lemi Ghariokwu have a longstanding transnational friendship that converges harmoniously at the intersection of their twin destiny to create the visual legacies associated with Fela’s legacy. In 2025, Jibola published Fela: Music Is the Weapon, a graphic novel recounting Fela’s radicalization through his intimate encounter with the Black Power Movement during his 1969 visit to the United States. Upon his return to Nigeria, Fela brought with him a transformed perspective that would shape his Afrobeat sound and imprint a political consciousness on his lyrics sung in Pidgin, Yoruba, and English. ALAF features two prints from Jibola’s graphic novel: The Leap (2025) and The Kiss (2025).

~

Adìye bà lé okùn; Ara ò rọ okùn; Ara ò rọ adìye.
A hen landed on a clothesline; The line is not at peace; The hen is not at peace.

In this essay, I presented one perspective on African cultural legacy interwoven with Yoruba proverbs (Òwe) given to me by my mother. I do not speak or write the poetic language of Yoruba, yet through this process, I have begun to adopt consciousness of a language and history that I had previously felt connected to only by name. Both I and this exhibition speak from incredibly specific perspectives, yet the aim is to stimulate an open conversation. Through art that carries an inherent desire to connect beyond ourselves, we may begin to find a shared language.

As Loud as Freedom is tied to post-independence Nigerian cultural legacies, but it is not a nationalist project. Rather, our shared positionality as Nigerian artists in the diaspora serves to deepen the context of Lemi Ghariokwu and Fela A. Kuti’s cultural lineage. Like both radicalists, the exhibition is inspired by the tenets of Négritude philosophy and Pan-African politics that promote transnational conversations about Black and African consciousness and the recognition of shared struggle.

Indeed, we are forever intertwined at the crucial moment of the Berlin Conference (1884–1885), when European nations gathered to divide African land into territories according to their own interests. Six decades later, at the dawn of the independence era, the liberationists returned to the European table at the Fifth Pan-African Congress, insisting on the decolonization of nation-states. I picture the Berlin Conference as a moment that unites Black struggle in perpetuity. Today, I find it imperative to resist the enduring tactic of “divide and conquer,” while maintaining respect for the distinct legacies that emerge from our respective regional histories.

Like a clothesline disturbed by the landing of a bird, peace is continually hard to come by in the ongoing nature of the colonial impact. As Loud as Freedom is a sound wave established by the constructive interference of individual refusals to be suppressed, whose energy further disrupts this historical line. The superposition of our voices produces an even louder sound that forcefully negates the pejorative sense of loudness that is often spouted as an anti-Black microaggression. (Nice try!). In the name of protest, with art and music operating as tools of resistance, we pose the question: What people and systems benefit when Black and African loudness is framed as a problem rather than a source of power?

References

Chinua Achebe, The Trouble with Nigeria, Fourth Dimension Publishers, 1983.

Dr. Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Pidginization as Curatorial Method: Messing with Languages and Praxes, Sternberg Press, 2023.

Fela Kuti: Fear No Man, podcast hosted by Jad Abumrad, produced by Higher Ground and Audible, 2025.

Wolfgang Benders, “Independence, highlife, liberation wars: Lagos 1950s and 1960s,” in the exhibition catalogue for The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa 1945–1994, edited by Okwui Enwezor, 2001.

Special thanks to Lemi Ghariokwu for his eternal generosity of knowledge and spirit. And to Mommy, Sade Oni, for joining me on this cyclical journey of curiosity and wisdom with great enthusiasm.