Artist fights corruption with solo exhibition

The fight against corruption took an artistic twist last week when Nigerian artist, Kehinde Dada ran a week-long solo exhibition of some 40 works celebrating the anti-corruption crusade.
The exhibition, which held at the lobby of the Transcorp Hilton, Abuja, featured paintings, mostly acrylic on canvas, mixed media and Dada’s specialty, acrylic on lithographic plate.
Some of the works featured showcased President Muhammadu Buhari wrestling a lion, a la Samson, trying to retrieve wads of cash from the lion’s mouth while another showed the president as a bespectacled rider defeating masked invaders, which the artist said represented the success of the president’s war against Boko Haram insurgents.
Other works featured are more abstract and their messages toned and embedded in the works.
Declaring the exhibition open, Prof. Bolaji Owasanoye, the Executive Secretary of the Presidential Advisory Committee on Anti-Corruption said, “In support of the current fight against corruption, Dada has decided to lend his voice and talent through his numerous intriguing art works as depicted in this exhibition, which is intended to raise awareness about the extent and cost of corruption.”
The curator of the exhibition Timothy Adefemi Adebayo said, “Dada’s creative commentaries are laudable in prints which erupts the quest for the development of a better society, quest for unity, quest for peace, quest for mutual understanding and faithfulness. His paintings are found to stand at the threshold of modern art, though with the form of classical tableau, it speaks of wholly contemporary issues.”
The artist, Kehinde Dada said his works weren’t motivated by any political affiliations but the collective good of the country.
“We are all in this fight together because if corruption eats the roots of the country and the system collapses, it will affect us all,” he said.
The exhibition closed on Friday.