…Arinze, Popoola explore headgear at joint show
Since 2021, two contemporary Nigerian artists have been working around an idea they hope would materialize into artistic masterpieces someday.
The idea was conceived by Dotun Popoola, who specializes in synergetic metal sculpting, while Stanley Arinze, who is best known for creating hyper realistic pencil drawings, bought into the idea.
Dotun idea was a collaborative work that will spotlight things that unite Nigerians and concepts that highlight our beauty rather than our shame.
Both settled for ‘gele’, the stylish headgear that Nigerian women wear in special occasions, which beams searchlights on their beauty as well as stands as a fashion symbol.
It also led to further development of the idea into a series they called ‘Gele Series’, which offered both the opportunity to create works in various media of artistic expression that highlight gele; its beauty, its uniting force, and as a fashion symbol.
As simple as the series sounds, it tasked the creative ingenuity of the artists as Dotun, who creates pieces of art works from discarded scrap metals, engaged his sculpting techniques to create something unique and as colourful as ‘gele’ to.
It was even more tasking for Arinze, who works primarily with charcoal and graphite on paper, and who is meant to use his work to highlight beauty and women rather than as a medium for social and political activism.
Finally, and after about five years, Dotun and Arinze are set to actualize their idea in a joint exhibition they titled ‘Gele Series’.
The exhibition will be held from October 24 to November 7, 2026 at Alexis Galleries, Akin Olugbade Street, Victoria Island, Lagos.
Each of the artists are presenting works across different media. Arinze is presenting five; four drawings and one sculpture, while Dotun is unearthing his sculpture treasure to present some of his best sculptures in recent times.
As expected, Dotun’s work at the exhibition will also reflect his environmental sustainability campaign, which has seen him repurposing wastes, and transforming them to treasures.
However, the exhibition holds a lot for both artists, especially Arinze. One, for the number of years it took to actualize it and secondly because it made Arinze step out of his comfort zone. In ‘Gele’, he tried his hands on new things, used new techniques and unfamiliar medium to turn a mere idea into creative masterpieces.
“The Gele Series is a huge turning point in my art career,” Arinze confessed.
“I started to explore colours and a little bit of texture in my works for the Gele exhibition. I think in the past two to three years, my work has gained a lot of difference between what it used to look like before and what it is now.
It is more colourful now and I think that is because of the context of the series”.
Yet, the exhibition offers Arinze the opportunity to showcase sculpture, for the first time at any show. “The Gele Series has been phenomenal for me because it allowed me to explore beyond just my primary medium. Now, I see myself exploring colour and sculpture,” he said.
Apart from enabling him to explore new medium of artistic expression, Arinze observed that his work now has a sort of new focus.
“Before now, my work has always had a little bit of tension with regards to social crises and our youth. But recently, my work has started to take a little dive into the discovery of what makes us beautiful as Nigerians, and as a people. So, lately my work has taken to the colourful side of our society,” Arinze explained.
In efforts at capturing the colourful side of the Nigerian society with art, Arinze and Dotun have truly done justice to their noble cause with matching works for the exhibition.
Not shying away from the essence of their efforts, both insisted that the focus on gele is intentional as they want to highlight the things that unite the Nigerian people, rather than wasting time on the ones that divide the people.
Gele, according to them, stands out as women across tribes, religion and social strata in Nigeria, all wear it.
him to experiment with other media.
The exhibition is worth seeing as both artists created works from personal and relatable experiences and everyday life as their mothers, sisters and wives all wear ‘gele’, and look their best on it.
On its part, Alexis Galleries is inviting the public to visit to see the exhibition, which examines how ‘gele’, a single, familiarized cultural phenomenon, can be rendered and reimagined to reveal extraordinary possibilities.
While ‘Gele’ is familiar; often seen at weddings, celebrations, religious gatherings and significant occasions, and its folds, shapes and drama are also recognizable, the familiarity with it can sometimes make people overlook what is right in front of them.
The exhibition is aimed at drawing attention to gele, beyond move beyond it being adornment and to become a language through which womanhood is explored.
Offering other reasons to see the exhibition, the gallery said that the works on display are truly enthralling. “In Arinze’s paintings, the women meet the viewer with a striking sense of presence. In Popoola’s monumental sculptures, the female figure is transformed into something commanding and regal,” Alexis Galleries stated, noting further that across both practices, the ‘gele’ becomes inseparable from the woman who wears it.
For Uche Obasi and Chidera Ogbu, co-curators of the exhibition, the exhibition is a must-see as it offers dual solo presentations of ‘Gele’ from the perspectives of two Nigerian masters, whose works come together around the familiar yet culturally phenomenon rooted in women’s fashion, ceremony, weddings, religious gatherings, identity, and freedom of social expression.
Explaining further in their curatorial statement, the curators noted that both artists, who are known for their highly naturalistic and hyper-realistic approaches, work across hyperrealist drawing, painting, and monumental metal sculpture, which are going to be among the works on display at the upcoming exhibition.
They also stated the creative ingenuity of the artists in turning ‘gele’ to a popular form that is strikingly recognizable within the Nigerian society, as well as asking how something so familiar can be re-made to reveal extraordinary possibilities.
For them, beneath the glamour of the gele’s popularity and practices lies the inner lives of its wearers – identify, self-presentation and self-knowledge.
“There is something particularly intimate about the relationship between a woman and what she chooses to wear. A ‘gele’ may be rooted in tradition, but the woman who wears it gives it her own meaning.
“Annze’s portraits draw us towards the women themselves. Their faces are not secondary to the gele, they hold our attention. There is quietness and intensity in their expressions that suggests an interior world beyond what is immediately visible. The gele frames these women, but it does not define them,” they noted.
In one of Stanley’s iconic paintings, which features an Ori – the female gaze, the curators spotlight a young woman wearing an intensely dark, reddish traditional Nigerian head tie like a majestic crown – a tiara, the regalia of an empress – revealing sheer self-knowledge and presence.
But in Popoola’s sculptures, the relationship, according to them, takes another dimension as the artist’s monumental figures transform the ‘gele’ into an almost architectural form.
Of course, welding monumental scrap metals has been Popoola’s preoccupation over the decades. One of his works on display, in the above form, shows a dominant matriarch in a majestic, glossy red draped gele-sculpted into a dramatic, wide fan -that rises and spreads behind her head like a crown.
Once again, the exhibition runs from October 24 to November 7, 2026 at Alexis Galleries, Akin Olugbade Street, Victoria Island, Lagos.
It is sponsored by Coca Cola, The Macallan, Art Café, Gin Mare, Mikano, Tiger, Schweppes, The Guardian and Aina Blankson Global.
