Abraham O. Oghobase
Notes to Self: Offerings on History and Memory

Abraham Oghobase investigates the ways that photographic images shape memory and history. The artist’s mixed-media installation Onoriode (Who Knows Tomorrow?) references both his middle name and its translation from the Urhobo language. Exhibited in context with the large-scale print installation Notes to Self, these recent bodies of work are made in response to the tensions inherent to both the personal and historical archive. Historically, photography was routinely used as a tool to legitimize colonial dominance and reinforce Eurocentric ideology. Oghobase’s reconstruction of images suggests a restorative counternarrative. The artist explores his Nigerian heritage through family photographs and archival imagery culled from the Herskovits Library of African Studies at Northwestern University. He explores different image-making methodologies to edit, overlay and reframe these images using analog technologies ranging from photocopying to screen printing. Family photos are enlarged on canvas and paired alongside readymade furniture. Monochromatic silhouettes of figures and flora are printed on Kozuke paper banners alongside agricultural and industrial imagery. Oghobase excavates the socio-economic and historical associations found in these images, centering his intellectual curiosity and lived experience as a corrective against racism, exploitation, and cultural erasure.