Echoes of Disorder at Nommo Gallery

The artist constructs deep conversations around the subject of divergent personalities and characters inspired by conversations in his immediate surroundings

ART | DOMINIC MUWANGUZI | Conversations are an integral part of our lives as humans and usually reveal our personalities and character. Equally, women are naturally gifted with the gift of talking and often through their conversations they are able to expose their character but also form relationships with different types of people in the community. The exhibition Echoes of Disorder showing at the Nommo Gallery explores the concept of conversation in our everyday life and how these conversations expose our divergent personalities. The artist, Solombi Benjamin is mostly inspired by the women in his immediate surrounding; the fact that he grew up as a lone male child among a group of six girls. In this, he would quietly listen to their animated conversations about different topics and this exposed him to the character of these women but also inadvertently stimulated his subconscious which is a pivotal component to the way he creates.

The female figures in his paintings suggest his personal experiences and immediate surrounding both in the past and present. They are painted with emphasis on facial and gestural expressions to reference the idea of talking and listening to conversations. Normally, when women are in conversations they’ll portray their different emotions of excitement, bewilderment, curiosity or resentment by moving their hands, reclining their heads in a certain position or momentarily close their eyes. Incidentally, these emotions often will reveal the character of the individual. Pilgrim at Sea, appropriately captures this particular experience where the six female figures sitting in an abstracted boat, are each wearing different facial and gestural expressions to suggest their different characters and emotions as they dialogue. This composition, conceived during the covid-19 pandemic, strongly demonstrates one of the major characteristics of the pandemic which involved people getting confined in their homes and in order to pass time, they resorted to conjuring different types of conversations. “I observed during the lockdown people from different backgrounds were compelled to sit and talk together. It didn’t matter if one was a pastor and the other was a prostitute, their divergent characters ironically brought them together,” he says.

Such an unusual experience echoes the shifting nature of character and its ability to be deceptive. As such, a closer observation of these paintings on display suggests a quality of illusiveness which permeates in their compositions. In Pilgrim at Sea, each of the depicted figures’ facial and gestural expressions suggest their illusive character. Though they’re seated together, they each posses different characteristic traits and ambitions. Equally, in The Unlikely Union the three women seated together bare an atmosphere of deception with the eyes of the two figures shut while the other one on the left, her eyes are open. More so, each figure is carrying a chess pawn curved out of a particular animal or bird on her lap. Nonetheless, the artists’ interrogation of the subject of deception is not limited to the bodily expressions of the female figures or the abstract images they’re in possession of but extends to his palette on canvas. “I mix a lot of colours to unearth what is beyond the obvious. This is important because of the way I work. I create characters of my subjects based on the conversations I hear. In order to effectively achieve this, I have to be keen on building texture and this requires mixing many colours to get the desired results,” he explains. The artist’s working with oils, naturally known for their strong textures, provides an effective navigation of this technique which consequently conspires to draw in the viewer.

As people speak, their real character is unearthed. It could be that facial or gestural expression which may communicate more about the person than the intended objective of the conversation. Yet still, personalities like life goals tend to vary from one individual to another. This disparity in character paradoxically contributes to their living together since the more different humans are, the more connected they become. Similarly, this divergence insinuates the unpredictable nature of life. Nothing in life is obvious or achieved on a silver platter. As such, the artist chooses to abstract his images to probe the idea of what is real and what is not. In doing this, he grips our attention on canvas asking us to reflect more on life and perhaps find meaning in its complex nature.

****

The exhibition Echoes of Disorder is showing at Nommo Gallery located on Plot 4 Victoria Avenue, Nakasero, Kampala.