I tried to describe this piece but his words were better than mine, so I quote…
“Split Image is the portrait of a man drenched in the mesmerizing but indefinable contours of a convoluted identity. This is the portrait of a proud and defiant individual who comports himself with an audacity that is at once confounding and inviting. Fabunmi’s spirit soars in this painting, accented as it were by brush strokes that are suggestive of the privilege granted only to a few. He is Caucasian. Really? He is Black: a product of some form of miscegenation, the type that the African-American artist, Archibald Motley, loved to celebrate in his paintings. Or is her? He is Rastafarian. He is …Well, he could be Nina Fabunmi’s alter ego: a subconscious articulation of her notion of Black Diaspora. Fabunmi enunciates in this painting the pangs and agonies, the stoicism and determination, the pride and confidence, which are contingent on the assertion of selfhood and issues of identity.”
……….Dele Jegede
Art Historian, Art Critic, Art Administrator, Painter & Cartoonist.
‘Split Image’ won Best of the Show for Artist Portfolio Magazine Portraits Edition in 2014 and is published in Issue 15 & Issue 19 of the magazine.
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