Another wonderful new discovery in our A Portfolio series is the works of Nassau, Bahamas-born, Brooklyn-based painter, Shanique Emelife. Having shown at Fortnight Institute, the queer Nigerian artist creates a mixture of folk-like figurative works with a subtle hint of metaphors for distance and ideas of home.
As the writer Asiya Wadud notes, "Rich living greens bear witness to the village and are the village in Emelife’s work. All these pieces are set in the outdoors, which points to where the center of the neighborhood rests. There is a deep and abiding serenity in these paintings. There is toil and work, too, but the tenderness of being together softens the toil. An insistent and/with lives in these paintings, which is ultimately another way to say ‘village’."
