Adébayo Bolaji is a multidisciplinary creator who uses his talents in painting, sculpture, film, and writing to form expressive and poetic pieces that captivate his viewers. Through narrative construction, Bolaji’s works display an insightful and deep understanding of the individual, exploring the adaptable and relatable artistic theme of beauty.
Taking over the first-floor galleries of the Arnolfini Centre for Contemporary Arts in Bristol, In Praise of Beauty is a kaleidoscopic adventure with a finely tuned and well-constructed layout that enhances the conversational aspect of the show, which opened just last week. The contextual and experiential dialogues of beauty are reflected in the experimental aesthetic of Bolaji’s pieces. For instance, the mixed-media series I Love You relies on the colours and textures of not only its own composition but also its accompanying sister pieces, playing into Bolaji’s ideas about the subjective and objective, and how our perceptions of beauty are often shaped by our environments.
Bolaji’s works in this collection are vibrantly philosophical, speaking to each person who encounters them. Going beyond the surface level often associated with aesthetics, In Praise of Beauty manifests curiosity and serves as a story of perception. In summary, In Praise of Beauty asks one not-so-simple question: What is beauty?, to which Adébayo Bolaji’s pieces respond, Beauty is feeling.
Hi Adébayo Bolaji, thank you for speaking with us! In honour of your new collection In Praise of Beauty, can you please introduce yourself to our readers and tell us what you think is beautiful about yourself?
I’m someone who is naturally curious. This curiosity manifests itself in artworks, primarily paintings but not limited to that. I think what is beautiful about myself is that I am myself, that I can comfortably say that I am happy with being myself. Who I am will be different to many people since we all perceive life differently, I cannot control that and I’m okay with that.
The collection is named In Praise of Beauty, but what is beauty to you? Is it aesthetic, or is it something deeper and more meaningful?
I think your question is really interesting because you first said aesthetic and then you said deeper and meaningful as if to say aesthetics lacks meaning, which, is one of the questions I’ve been investigating for many years now. When I think about the question what is beauty? I get this overwhelming feeling because it’s such a big question. And so, with anything seemingly big I like to put it into smaller parts to help me see better.
These smaller parts mean that I think about the word in different scenarios. These scenarios are contexts and contexts can shift the meaning of a thing. For example, it might be okay to speak on the phone if one is alone whilst watching a movie but do that in a cinema with other people and you’d be thrown out. The context is different. With beauty, I’ve found that we use it in so many different ways but, its constant theme seems to be that it makes one feel good. It is something that pleases us. It is never used in a negative sense unless we say there is too much of it. So, I know that it’s something good and something that makes us feel good. It’s experiential, whether it be intellectually, physically, spiritually or whatever it pleases, and this pleasure is, in one sense, always experiential. This does bring some bigger questions meaning that, who creates the beauty, does beauty exist within an object intrinsically or inside of us, or both? Because if we are experiencing it from an object and someone else is not is it the object or us? Or is it a neurological make-up for some individuals versus another? Meaning that do some people have specific receptors in the brain that respond to certain compositions and others do not?Already when asking these questions we are going deeper than the surface. Aesthetics to some, seems to only have a surface-level quality. And so, it is common to speak of aesthetics in lacking deep meanings. Whereas to my mind, aesthetics is composition, composition is design and design is also story-telling. Stories have meaning, stories have the ability to carry weight. I think aesthetics gives the illusion of lacking deeper meaning because its focus is to create a kind of cognitive ease, it’s like it’s there so the mind doesn’t have to work, but digest something visually with absolute ease which, brings a kind of pleasure. And like I said with anything pleasurable one would mostly likely say beautiful but in this context of cognitive ease they might say “it’s just beautiful” because visually it was easy to digest and offers nothing more. Because there was ease. I also think there is no reward system with this in the sense of one earning something. When we have earned pleasure like understanding something intellectually difficult, we therefore say it was deep. This deepness may not be because the thing is intrinsically deep but it’s now only so because it was at first difficult and eventually understood.
Aesthetics that are deep is when someone like an artist creates a visual that has something highly familiar (cognitive ease) but puts in something to challenge what we are visually used to, thus making one pause, and potentially begin to think. So, we now say it’s beautiful but also deep because we had to work hard.
I say all of this to say, beauty can therefore be deep and not deep but maybe this depends on who is experiencing it.
These smaller parts mean that I think about the word in different scenarios. These scenarios are contexts and contexts can shift the meaning of a thing. For example, it might be okay to speak on the phone if one is alone whilst watching a movie but do that in a cinema with other people and you’d be thrown out. The context is different. With beauty, I’ve found that we use it in so many different ways but, its constant theme seems to be that it makes one feel good. It is something that pleases us. It is never used in a negative sense unless we say there is too much of it. So, I know that it’s something good and something that makes us feel good. It’s experiential, whether it be intellectually, physically, spiritually or whatever it pleases, and this pleasure is, in one sense, always experiential. This does bring some bigger questions meaning that, who creates the beauty, does beauty exist within an object intrinsically or inside of us, or both? Because if we are experiencing it from an object and someone else is not is it the object or us? Or is it a neurological make-up for some individuals versus another? Meaning that do some people have specific receptors in the brain that respond to certain compositions and others do not?Already when asking these questions we are going deeper than the surface. Aesthetics to some, seems to only have a surface-level quality. And so, it is common to speak of aesthetics in lacking deep meanings. Whereas to my mind, aesthetics is composition, composition is design and design is also story-telling. Stories have meaning, stories have the ability to carry weight. I think aesthetics gives the illusion of lacking deeper meaning because its focus is to create a kind of cognitive ease, it’s like it’s there so the mind doesn’t have to work, but digest something visually with absolute ease which, brings a kind of pleasure. And like I said with anything pleasurable one would mostly likely say beautiful but in this context of cognitive ease they might say “it’s just beautiful” because visually it was easy to digest and offers nothing more. Because there was ease. I also think there is no reward system with this in the sense of one earning something. When we have earned pleasure like understanding something intellectually difficult, we therefore say it was deep. This deepness may not be because the thing is intrinsically deep but it’s now only so because it was at first difficult and eventually understood.
Aesthetics that are deep is when someone like an artist creates a visual that has something highly familiar (cognitive ease) but puts in something to challenge what we are visually used to, thus making one pause, and potentially begin to think. So, we now say it’s beautiful but also deep because we had to work hard.
I say all of this to say, beauty can therefore be deep and not deep but maybe this depends on who is experiencing it.
You have a law degree and studied acting at The Central School of Speech and Drama, which are two pretty different crafts. How have you (if at all) merged and combined your various experiences into one path? Have you retained what you learned (both spiritually and academically) during both degrees and utilised this knowledge in In Praise of Beauty?
Absolutely. One of the gifts of the law is to understand points of view. This means you have to be able to listen, and I mean really listen because you need to know the other side of the argument. You have to also be empathetic because at the heart of persuasion is the act of seeing others. These same principles are found in acting. An actor doesn’t just know only their own lines in the play or film. One has to know the play, know who one is speaking to, with and why. There is also giving space to space itself, the space of the stage, the audience or the lens and lighting. Both these degrees strengthened my third eye, seeing myself but also being able to see outside myself, to be subjective but also objective. It’s never simply just insular. We have to be open. This I feel has even made me a better artist. I also find my work has a kind of theatricality to it which I have deliberately used in expressing this idea of exploring beauty. The composition of this show involves a kind of main character, myself, who dialogues with himself in finding out what beauty means. This is actualised in the Thought Room the first room one encounters when seeing the show. Very similar to meeting the protagonist at the start of a film or play and also similar to an opening argument per se of a law case. These can help ground a viewer in my artistic reality, rather than feeling lost. It kind of prepares them for what they are about to see. I like this.
In Praise of Beauty consists of painting, sculpture, film and writing; it feels more experimental than your previous collections with an increased use of textile and written work. Where did you learn your varying artistic skills? What sparked you to go in this multidisciplinary direction when it came to creating?
Like Francis Bacon once explained, I learned by just spending time with myself and creating. Trying things out. Always staying curious. Keeping a playful attitude. Allowing mistakes to happen in order to find new things. This kind of spirit. This doesn’t mean there is no repetition. In fact, repetition can encourage flow. Meaning the more one does something the more one gets better at it. The better something is the more flow it has. The more flow something has the more open it is to receiving new ideas. However, this openness has to be rooted in an initial attitude about oneself. If my attitude from the start is I want to be open, new ideas are encouraged. If my attitude is, I hate new ideas then well, new ideas can struggle to come. I mean this regardless of what we do, because underneath every physical act is a spirit, an attitude. That’s just as important. I also think it is not good to impose. So, to your question about [it being] more experimental. I believe the work will always tell you what it needs. So, it’s not experimental for just the sake of it. That to me is self-indulgent. I always do what is needed. And I find this by trying everything I can at that given time and what remains is what is necessary.
How do you decide what materials to use for a certain piece? Do you base your artwork on the materials or the materials on the artwork?
I feel it. It’s instinctive. My instincts are not apart from the subject of the show. It’s already invested intellectually at the start. So now I have this root, I’m free to play practically because the instincts have the foundational or intellectual information. At the same time, I will check in and ask myself, why and why not. It’s a dance between feeling and thinking but kind of happening at high speed simultaneously.
You said this collection is “bringing beauty into focus”, how do you think your work achieves this?
I think there is the obvious use of conventional ideas about beauty, detail codes from an aesthetic standpoint, with my personal visual elaborations. And then the different contexts in which I explore it. I won’t say more than that, I kind of like people to have that answer for themselves.
Bodiless heads seem to be a prominent symbol throughout the collection – most notably in your fabric sculpture (of which I cannot find the name). What is the motive behind this imagery? It reminded me a lot of Mary Russo’s term the “female grotesque”, so, similarly, are you using gore to challenge preconceived notions of beauty?
I can see why you would quote Russo here. My subject matter of the sculpture titled The Head of Medusa is in fact about the gaze upon women and the dichotomy of being adored or admired versus abused. This is carried through to the Congo piece which has countless bodiless heads but again the conversation about that which is beautiful to many yet, look at what it also makes someone do — abuse a country — a continent in fact. Let me reverse that, not that beauty itself makes one abuse but what people do because of it. And this is what I mean about beauty in that, is it purely in the object or also something that we create in us? If anything I have found that there are clearly levels to beauty and the moment you have anything that can go to an extreme it becomes powerful and anything powerful is also dangerous.
Your last collection To Speak Out Loud (2023) was influenced by the EndSARS protests; a collection which was centred around understandability. How is In Praise of Beauty different when thinking about comprehensibility? Do you think it is more universally relatable and, if so, do you think it is expanding the limits of your work?
To Speak Out Loud, was about understandability but in the context of one’s voice, one’s identity. So, it was really getting us to look directly at ourselves. My work is always about the individual because we make up the world. Everyone matters. This exhibition is still about the individual because it is asking you what do you think?. That said the focus of the story is beauty. So, I guess I am using beauty or pleasure per se, as a gateway into asking questions that are not always pleasurable such as, why do we do evil things?. It does also have moments of wonder or enjoyment for the sake of enjoyment like the Aesthetic Movement from French philosopher Victor Cousin, who publicised it in his lectures of 1817-18. Art for art’s sake because this is also part of the conversation about beauty.
How do you think Arnolfini’s space will aid the reaction to and experience of In Praise of Beauty? Did you have any say in the layout of your pieces, and how was this decided?
They have been really open and great in helping me fully realise my vision. They appreciate the theatricality that I want to bring and like the NAE where this show originated, are keen to let my voice be at the centre. Like when creating a new piece, I listen first. This means to feel out the space and understand what the space needs in relation to my voice.
How will you progress as an artist, and human being, from In Praise of Beauty?
Progress is not separate from my environment. And inevitably, my environment will change, because that is life and I cannot control that. But what I can control is how I respond and this involves learning. And this means staying curious which is at the heart of my own humanity, I think [I will] always be a student really.
