For EXPO CHICAGO 2025, Omenai Gallery presents a duo- exhibition that includes the works of Tariq Oliver and Kwaku Osei Owusu Achim, two emerging artists from West Africa with a shared reflection on language, meaning, and memory. The concept behind our presentation for EXPO CHICAGO 2025 is The Contemporary Artist As Alchemist – an extension of the gallery’s ethos and a reference to an artist’s ability to dissect and distil the universal human experience into precious moments of contemplation. Our presentation will act as a laboratory for authenticity and autonomy, but also as a place of rest and renewal.
Through their craft, both Achim and Oliver albeit with differing points of reference, speak to the inherently complex experience that manifests when an individual’s personal identity stems from an amalgamation of cultures. Their work is an example of their lived realities, simultaneously looking back with an aesthetics of nostalgia, whilst looking forward to a future of hope.
With its regional Midwestern focus, EXPO CHICAGO is the ideal environment to cultivate a dialogue between two creative practitioners who, despite their independence, communicate through an interdependent narrative that connects with the world beyond spoken language. With Chicago being the cultural hub for a multitude of peoples, as well as being the home of Omenai Gallery, our presentation is grounded in an appreciation for exchange, where heterogeneous networks of communities are formed and culture can flourish. Achim and Oliver, informed by an intellectual engagement with form and concept, rather than undefined intuition, explore these overlapping realities and find clarity through relation with the other. Acting with an encoded awareness of one’s origins, and accumulating emotions and insights like the characters in their work, both artists turn the intangible into physical form, with a freedom and resilience that continuously expands, inviting the viewer to do the same.
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