FF Projects presents A Miracle Is A Reasonable Thing to Ask For, the inaugural exhibition in its year-long residency at Alára. Travelling from its first iteration in Miami, the exhibition brings together a new body of hand-woven and intricately beaded textile works by Nigerian artist Fadekemi Ogunsanya.
Building on Ogunsanya’s continued interest in folklore, gender, and the female psyche, A Miracle Is A Reasonable Thing to Ask For reimagines the Yorùbá legend of Oluronbi. In the tale, Oluronbi, unable to conceive, forges a pact with Iròkò, an ancient tree inhabited by a powerful spirit who grants blessings in exchange for sacrifice. She vows that if she is given a child, she will return the gift. When her wish is fulfilled, she breaks her promise, unable to surrender her only child, and is forced to reckon with the spirit of the Iròkò tree. The legend confronts ideas that resonate throughout Ogunsanya’s practice, reckoning with questions of power and sacrifice, reflecting on the spiritual and emotional cost of desire.
While Ogunsanya’s early works combined oil, gouache, and watercolor with hand-painted, carved wooden frames– collapsing the boundary between painting and sculpture– her recent turn to textiles marks a deeper engagement with her Yorùbá heritage. The color indigo, long a defining presence in her practice, connects this new body of work to Adire, the traditional Yorùbá resist-dyed textile. The woven cotton cloth is produced in Kano before undergoing the Adire process, in which Ogunsanya sketches the scenes, using cassava paste applied with a feather, which is then folded, tied, stitched, or wax-patterned and repeatedly immersed in fermented indigo dye to build up its deep, saturated blue. Only after this extensive dyeing ritual does Ogunsanya begin to transform the fabric in her Lagos studio, where she embellishes each tapestry with hand-woven beads, embroidery, and layered textile techniques. Each work functions as a chapter in the unfolding story of Oluronbi, turning the exhibition into a visual retelling of the legend.
