On Labour, Liberty and Art in the Work of Oluseye
Oluseye Ogunlesi in the studio, 2023. Photo: Michael Duong. Courtesy of the artist.
One of the enduring features of Black life in Canada centres around how labour — often invisible or perhaps forgotten — is intertwined with identity. So often, such experiences are kept alive through memories and oral histories that offer paths to imagined futures. These experiences are also part of our material surroundings, which often contain beliefs, stories, myths, hopes and dreams.
These are some of the ideas taken up by Nigerian-Canadian artist Oluseye Ogunlesi (he uses the mononym Oluseye), whose work stems from the oral histories collected through his travels. Oluseye’s assemblages imbue everyday objects with cultural complexity, historical authenticity and significance.
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Oluseye Ogunlesi, Ploughing Liberty, 2021. Found farm tools, hockey sticks and brass dowels. Photo: Toni Hafkensheid. Courtesy of the artist.
In Ploughing Liberty (2021), exhibited at Greater Toronto Art 2021 at Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto, Oluseye presents a series of wall-mounted sculptures inspired by conversations he had with the late Ms. Myrna, a well-respected elder who shared stories of the history of North Preston, a community just outside of Dartmouth, N.S. As descendants of Jamaican Maroons who fought the British for freedom and were consequently deported to Canada against their will, her ancestors were promised land by the Crown which never materialized. Instead, they endured hard labour and segregation, along with Black Loyalists who settled in Canada after fighting alongside the British in the American Revolution — racial injustices that have left an imprint on Black Nova Scotians to this day.
In its resonant engagement with Canadian history and Black labour, Ploughing Liberty powerfully evokes the ongoing complications found within the word nation. As provocative hybrid forms, Oluseye’s sculptures make visible what is too often forgotten or overlooked, namely that ideas of belonging and exclusion, labour and leisure, and pleasure and pain, are often deeply interconnected and indivisible. The sculptures challenge the viewer to think anew about what is past and present, and poignantly remind us of stories that are as enduring as the land itself.
This article is an excerpt and and is available in full in the Spring/Summer 2023 issue of Studio Magazine.
