Q&A with Betty Ogun

The multidisciplinary artist's debut solo show LOVE/FIGHT comes to new space TACHE Gallery

You have also spoken about your work’s relationship to resilience and how softness is a big aspect of this resilience. Could you elaborate on this concept and how it is reflected in your work?

The world is really hard, so I'm not going to be as hard; I'm going to meet it with softness. Resilience to me means just sort of existing and not letting your surroundings change who you are. I think that is what my exhibition is trying to tell people of all genders, of all races—that your existence is enough. And in many cases, especially for women and especially for Black women, it's so political, so resilience is shown by not allowing your soundness of mind to be changed by things.

In the Fight series, what is the symbolism and significance of the boxing glove image?

I've always done martial arts and MMA, but I got really into it when I was going through a tough time in my late teens. It taught me about the importance of discipline, which made me want to make the series. Learning how to fight became a therapeutic way for me to make sense of what was going on around me, not in a violent way, but more of a strategic way. The Fight series is almost a statement about being smart and tactical with your decisions. And the boxing gloves symbolise protection and taking responsibility for yourself in situations. But the question I'm asking is, as Black women, how do we protect ourselves?

The characters in your paintings are not painted from still life or photographs, so what is the process of creating these people? Who are they and where do they come from?

I feel like people think I'm painting portraits of people, and I'm not—like my painting of the pregnant woman, that woman does not exist. It’s all off the top of my head. I have a mother and baby painting that will be in the exhibition, which is loosely based on a scene I saw in a market in Nigeria when I was visiting family in Lagos. But generally, my subjects are faceless because they can be anyone, and they're faceless because I don't want people to focus on the personality or identity of who they are. Because my work is not really about identity. The figures just come from experiences that I'm trying to symbolise.

One of the paintings depicts the image of a cheerleader, which I thought was quite an interesting choice, as, in my opinion, I see the symbol of a cheerleader as a very Americanised and archaic representation of femininity. Why did you choose to use this image in this modern context?

We all know that cheerleaders are performative—their job is performance in a manner that is physically taxing. And at the end of the day, they are not their own; it’s not their own sport because it is attached to cheering on male-dominated areas. I was relating this to my experience of being a woman, and the experience of other women around me from different backgrounds, and the idea of having to adhere to an idea of femininity that is pleasing to a patriarchal lens. So I thought the cheerleader summed this up perfectly, because what happens when she stops performing? The figure is in the middle of her performance, but you can’t see her face—we are focused on the movement of this figure and the brightness of the colours, but it’s all performance.