Leonard Iheagwam
BLACK STAR
21st December - 1st February 2025
BLACK STAR deepens the artist’s ongoing inquiry into what African Pop Art can become: an aesthetic of bold colour, vibrancy, and critical reflection shaped by contemporary African experience. The works draw from an imagined manifesto of “Afro-Futurism, ” envisioning a world in which humanity reclaims hope amid technological and social collapse. In SOLDIER’s universe, machines merge with human intuition, ancient knowledge fuses with innovation, and a renewed sense of self and society rises from the debris of modernity.
SOLDIER constructs a visual language that is at once playful and prophetic. His cosmic figures drift through outer-world skies, drawing us into a realm where imagination becomes a form of resilience. The works extend his interest in portraiture, presenting futuristic young Black subjects whose presence feels both intimate and otherworldly. Against luminous orange atmospheres—skies that glow like charged horizons—his characters inhabit spaces shaped by eclipses, clouds, and radiant bursts of light. The scenes carry the quiet grandeur of a mythic odyssey, offering a sense of ascendance rather than escape.
In this world, familiar boundaries dissolve. The old idea of the sky as a limit gives way to an expanded universe—one in which his figures move with calm assurance, as though space itself responds to their presence. SOLDIER’s touch is felt throughout: a subtle echo of his own negotiations of identity, belonging, and ambition as he moves between Lagos and London. These works do not declare their meaning outright; instead, they suggest it—through atmosphere, gesture, and a visual confidence shaped by an artist learning to inhabit multiple worlds at once.
