FF Projects is pleased to announce formae, a two-person exhibition by New York-based artists Maya Beverly and Braden Hollis. Opening on May 30th at Alára, Lagos, as part of FF Projects' year-long residency programme, formae marks the first in a series of collaborations between the two artists and friends, whose respective painting and sculpture practices have developed through productive dialogue since their initial meeting in 2023.
The title formae– the Latin plural of forma, meaning shape, figure, or appearance– speaks directly to the formal preoccupations each artist brings to the space. Beverly's ceramic sculptures, built through labour-intensive hand-building techniques and enriched with materials including gold-leaf, concrete, and PVC, investigate the power of objects and how they communicate something beyond their immediate materiality: animism, cosmology, cultural memory. Hollis's paintings operate through an instinctive choreography of layering and removal, using colour, line and brushstroke to create these portraits and landscapes drawn from direct observation, art history, and popular culture.
The exhibition emerges from a sustained period of exchange between the two artists, including a joint residency at Oxbow School of the Arts in Saugatuck, Michigan, where conversations about process and the pace of making sharpened the conceptual grounding of the show. While their approaches differ in medium and method, Beverly and Hollis share an understanding of collaboration as intuitive rather than prescriptive: works were made independently, but with awareness of each other's visual instincts.
formae is the first iteration of an ongoing series conceived by Beverly and Hollis, and the third presentation in FF Projects' year-long residency at Alára. The exhibition continues FF Projects' commitment to sustained, reciprocal engagement with artists working across the global African diaspora.
