Southern Guild welcomes Nigerian-Canadian artist Oluseye to the GUILD Residency programme for a two-month stay. This will be the artist’s first time visiting South Africa, and the GUILD’s third artist-in-residence.

Oluseye uses diasporic debris — a term he coined to describe the artifacts, discarded materials, and found objects he collects from his trans-Atlantic travels — to explore Black being across themes. These transformational objects are recast into sculpture, installation, performance and photography. Their explorations invoke Oluseye’s personal narratives and travels within a broader examination of Black diasporic identities, popular culture, migration and spiritual traditions.
Each wall-hung talisman, to which the ongoing collection has been given the title Eminado, physically traces and embodies the transgenerational movement of the Black diaspora.

Across his practice, Oluseye embraces the notion of Blackness as divine, fluid, and unfixed; unbound by time, space and geographies. As such, his work blends the ancestral with the contemporary, the traditional with the modern, the physical with the spiritual, the new with the old, and the past with the future.

Oluseye’s time at the residency will overlap with the tenth Investec Cape Town Art Fair (ICTAF) in February 2023, where he will be showing for the first time at both the fair and with Southern Guild.

His proposal for his time at the residency is excitingly ambitious and will see him collaborate with a range of local artisans, crafters and fabricators on various projects.

Click here to read more about the GUILD Residency programme.