Missing
Peju Alatise
2014
Mixed media

‘Missing’ is a series of textile printed canvases with the silhouettes.  Positioned with spaces against each other, but with backgrounds of textile prints of what appears to look like Dutch- wax resist fabrics, patterned in various colours. They all individually portray the identity of female children. What we refer to with great sympathy and care ‘The Chibok girls of 2014’. These girls are victims of the result of what is the war between government and terrorism, they are the rope in the tug of war, and caught in between and made to rot. They are the victims of what would futuristically be in the months after their kidnapping as the tragedies of a war. Sold into sex slavery, born into it, physically abused and violated, never to remain the same again, always with the dredging memory. Alatise paints a silhouette of the head of anonymous girls in the centre of each canvas, some of the 85- 96 canvases and empty spaces, are bold face images of little girls in primary school hairstyles. With the background of the ever glowing textile fabrics. Some left bare and background created dark to contour and make the shape of heads.  Some spaces left empty as they represent in better significance the physical absence of the abducted girls. With rimed textile boarders that still capture a spirit of the body taken away.

In recent times the economic depression within Nigeria has led to alot of poor turn of events, other than just the depletion of the structures which govern Nigeria’s societies such as ‘Religious leadership, Family values, Political Governance, Education and Economy’, it’s also made people lose a lot of hope with regards to seeing a secure future in the land of their birth. Thus making the hard decision to move through extenuating circumstances to gain greener pastures. The circumstances I speak of are links directly related to the recent news outbreak of the African immigrants who sought to migrate to Europe for work, however became the master ploys in the grand scheme of human traffickers, gangs and other ill-fated souls within the Libyan community.                                                                                                                            Remembering the connection between the instances of rapes, child prostitution, sex trafficking of minors, as sexual harassment circumstances that the African migrants might have endured, I then thought of the abducted Chibok girls who may have endured the exact same or equal tragedies. It’s a terrible truth that some people have to endure such harsh circumstances and be manipulated into the traumatic situations which they might find themselves in through these pursuits for a better futures. It is truly sad.

Reference

Pejualatise.com. (2017). PEJU ALATISE « ARTIST’S STATEMENT «. [online] Available at: http://www.pejualatise.com/artist-statement/ [Accessed 6 Dec. 2017].