Gerald Chukwuma - Captured In Time: Accra Gallery II

Renowned for his intricately carved wooden slate sculptures, Captured In Time includes work made during the artist’s exploration of a new technique - infusing wood carving, block printing and painting on canvas into his oeuvre. Inspired by the 1966 Igbo novel Efuru - written by Flora Nwapa regarded as the first novel to be published internationally by a Nigerian woman writer, Chukwuma describes the layered block printing process to be a metaphor for the story of Efuru’s life - an independent woman respected for her trading ability and longing to become a mother in the context of traditional Igbo society. Each block print a reflection of itself - representing the duality of Efuru’s experience as she considers traditional Igbo values in the face of contemporary societal changes.

Captured in Time also documents from the artist’s childhood memory, traditional days of celebration lost to modernity. Often catalysts for communal discourse, the bodies move through the works with an energy reminiscent of traditional dance being passed from the elders to the young.