Water No Get Enemy - No. 4

Year:                 2023

Materials:        Bleach, Spray paint, and Oil stick on Adire (resist tie-dyed) textile.

Dimension:     100 x 101 cm (40 x 40.5 in)

Status:             Available

Unique Original / One of a kind

Includes a signed Certificate of Authenticity

About the Water No Get Enemy - No. 4

My mother had a morning ritual in Lagos. She drank tea, and when people visited, tea was something she would offer them. It was an ordinary part of life, repeated often enough that its significance became clearer to me only with distance.

 

This work brings that memory into relation with another material: coffee. My mother and I also drank coffee together, and coffee later entered my studio as something I could physically use to stain cloth. The title remembers tea; the surface is made partly through coffee. I want that difference to remain visible rather than make the two experiences identical.

 

After moving from Nigeria to Britain, the cold of Manchester made me newly aware of physical warmth. At the same time, distance changed the way I thought about the relational warmth of home, conversation and time spent together. Treasure of Mama's Tea grew from those connections and from a continuing question: what makes an ordinary experience become something we treasure?

Material / Process

Coffee is used here as a staining material rather than simply as an image or reference. I work the coffee-dyed textile together with Adire through cutting, layering and bonding onto canvas. The process allows colour, stain, pattern and surface to build the work physically, while tea and coffee enter the work in different ways: one through remembered ritual, the other also as material.

Print Edition

Limited-edition canvas print, unstretched, in a series of 20 copies.

Dimensions: 20(W) x 20(H) inches

Canvas

Price: £195

Unstretched canvas, shipped. securely in a tube.

Custom print sizes are available as well

The total edition consists of 20 printed pieces.