UNSETTLED

Adéwálé Adénlé explores dual realities and logics in socio-cultural-political constructs, arriving at a three-dimensional painting that vastly engages the viewer to unload and search for multiple logics in its interpretation. Within these dualities, he induces metaphorical slippages in relationships between objects and their contexts to form new meanings. In this exhibition, UNSETTLED, Adénlé interrogates socio-political (in)stability through materially fractured pictorial space. He draws from his lived experiences, shaped by the economies of oil and histories of extraction and dis/relocation, to work across layers operating as sites of tension—between visibility and concealment, power and its refusal. Intriguing piped-holes serves as conduits to alternative realities on the back panels, while resisting the illusion of a singular, authoritative frontal image. By destabilizing frontality and privileging access through rupture, UNSETTLED challenges socio-political norms that rely on closure, containment, and surface legibility—insisting that meaning, like justice, often resides elsewhere—behind, beneath, and beyond what is immediately visible.

Adénlé holds an MA in museum studies, an MFA in painting/drawing, and a Ph.D. in arts/museum administration, education, and policy. He has taught art practice/theory in numerous K-12 schools and universities and has completed several public art projects— including Congo Square, an 8 ft × 14 ft cast-bronze high-relief in downtown New Orleans. For nearly two decades, Adénlé worked as a socio-political cartoonist/editor in various newspapers in Nigeria, the United Kingdom, and the United States. He has also exhibited, curated, conducted research, and facilitated visual art and theory programs/projects across four continents. He currently lives and works in Atlanta, where he also serves as an Assistant Professor at Georgia State University.