When it comes to handling gender rights, artist, Oluwafunke Saka’s works and themes fall between the lines of intellectual articulation and emotional entitlement.
Her paintings highlight social, spiritual and other challenges, as some of the works also single out women as victims. Ironically, one of such works presents women as the central cause of their dilemma.
In her investigation into female gender dilemma, Saka stuns viewers of her work with a piece that combines surreal and suspense. The piece titled What the Hands Cannot Hold appears like a contradiction, which emphasizes the limbs in text, but removes them in imagery. If there are no hands in the first place, as she deocta in the figure, then there should be nothing to hold, that’s the immediate thoughts crossing a viewer’s mind a out the title.
However, the artist and storyteller in Saka pulls a surprise in what seems like the narrative of a woman without hands that captures females as members of the society that hides their agony. Strangely, how would any woman hides their pain when in fact she needs help?
Culturally, the woman is expected to shoulder nearly all domestic activities, and a resistance, according to the artist’s work, could be seen as rebellion. So, she has to pretend that all is well despite going through so much pains to satisfy everyone.
More explanations required to satisfy the curiosity of the figure not having hands, more so that she needs them to satisfy the society. Surprisingly, the limbless figure symbolically proves that women’s hands are always overwhelmed, especially with domestic activities. And sometimes when she is a career person, either in private business or corporate practice, the burden of combined family and profession become overwhelming.
For a woman to be so critical of her gender as Saka does with the painting What the Hands Cannot Hold suggests a twist to the established narrative of campaign on gender imbalance. Perhaps, the artist should have added generational shift perspective to the gender imbalance issue. As much as the older generation of women have been over submissive to society’s demands, the emerging young women are not exactly the same.
When women get sandwiched between self-satisfaction and satisfying the larger society, perhaps, they need to have one of Oluwafunke’s art pieces on their walls. The piece she calls Best of Both Worlds offers physical and spiritual solutions to challenges.
A mixed media of acrylic, paper and yarn on canvas, Best of Both Worlds appears like art from the desk of a kid artist, but presents deep intellectual contents. Basically, it gives insight into what it takes to live between worlds, that usually comes with the opposite sides of every choice.
The work explains two sides of every story, which could be in the physical and the spiritual; the harmony of differences, or inherited or the self-made. The artist has a personal experience to share about duality of the world: “It draws on my own journey of navigating cultural, emotional, and spiritual spaces that often feel intertwined, yet ultimately shape a fuller sense of self.”
The piece, which comes in oval shape with what looks like eyes, perhaps representing spiritual and physical sight, explores the quiet harmony that can exist within duality. Though not gender based, Best of Both World could serve as a twin piece, philosophically to What the Hands Cannot Hold. The themes have something in common about difficulty in choice, avoidable or forced to accept.
As a conceptual artist, based in the UK, Oluwafunke Saka brings multidisciplinary perspective into painting, mixed media, and installation. Her bio says she explores the intersections of mental health, spirituality, identity, and transformation often merging abstraction and figuration into a symbolic language that speaks to both personal and collective experience.
Born in Nigeria, Saka’s career is an interesting mix of art and science. She holds a bachelors degree in Pharmacy and a masters in Fine Art. Her bio explains that the dual background reflects a lifelong commitment to healing: as medicine restores the body, she sees art as medicine for the heart and soul. For her, creating is both a personal act of therapy and a gift to the viewer. A way to open space for introspection, emotional connection, and change.
