작품 상세

Estimate: ₦ 3,500,000-4,500,000 | $7,700-9,800 | Duke Asidere’s colourful and trendy elegant maidens have become the artist’s visual signature commentary of our modern women. He has produced numerous studies of the subject in various media- charcoal, pencil pastel, etc. In a number of these studies, because they are indeed studies because of his consistent reference of this loved subject, he deliberately screens –off their faces as if to direct the viewer his search for the idealistic rather than the identity of his maidens. Prominent on his studies is the definition of their breast. This may suggest multiple symbolic references that the viewers are at liberty to draw their personal conclusion. In my reading, I would prefer to see the artists drawing inspiration from our traditional sculptures with exaggerated reproductive organs symbolic of fertility and capacity to advance the continuity of the human species. Duke Asidere has carved for himself a place in the annals of modern Nigerian art as an artist who may have produced the concentrated body of works on contemporary African woman employing the conceptual approach. His work could be said to be the lens of the new generation that recall the stylised elegant women of Enwonwu. (JB) | Duke Asidere (Nigerian, b. 1961), Story Book Searching, 2020, Oil on canvas, 183 x 122 cm. (72 x 48 in.), Signed and dated (lower left).