About

Two or three sides of the same Story, the debut exhibition of Gabonese visual artist Naïla Opiangah presents universal stories told through the lens of her corps, the figures she fashions with her loose, lush, gestural brushstrokes in oil paint. The artist’s oeuvre straddles the line between abstraction and figuration. At first glance, the figures present appear to resemble Black women’s bodies. Likening her corps to the putti, the cherubim ubiquitous in European painting of the Renaissance, Baroque and Rococo eras, the artist sees them as a provisional lens. Like the putti, Opiangah’s corps …