For EXPO CHICAGO 2025, Omenai Gallery presents a duo- exhibition that features the works of Tariq Oliver and Kwaku Osei Owusu Achim, two rising artists from West Africa with a shared reflection on language, that means, and reminiscence. The idea behind our presentation for EXPO CHICAGO 2025 is The Modern Artist As Alchemist – an extension of the gallery’s ethos and a reference to an artist’s capacity to dissect and distil the common human expertise into treasured moments of contemplation. Our presentation will act as a laboratory for authenticity and autonomy, but additionally as a spot of relaxation and renewal.
By their craft, each Achim and Oliver albeit with differing factors of reference, converse to the inherently advanced expertise that manifests when a person’s private identification stems from an amalgamation of cultures. Their work is an instance of their lived realities, concurrently wanting again with an aesthetics of nostalgia, while wanting ahead to a way forward for hope.
With its regional Midwestern focus, EXPO CHICAGO is the best atmosphere to domesticate a dialogue between two artistic practitioners who, regardless of their independence, talk via an interdependent narrative that connects with the world past spoken language. With Chicago being the cultural hub for a large number of peoples, in addition to being the house of Omenai Gallery, our presentation is grounded in an appreciation for alternate, the place heterogeneous networks of communities are fashioned and tradition can flourish. Achim and Oliver, knowledgeable by an mental engagement with type and idea, fairly than undefined instinct, discover these overlapping realities and discover readability via relation with the opposite. Appearing with an encoded consciousness of 1’s origins, and accumulating feelings and insights just like the characters of their work, each artists flip the intangible into bodily type, with a freedom and resilience that repeatedly expands, inviting the viewer to do the identical.
