Twelve photographs, led by the portrait Escape, explore the distance between what people show and what they carry LAGOS, NIGERIA. Nigerian fine-art photographer Ibrahim Kareem presents “What Remains Unsaid”, his first solo exhibition, at Art Place Lagos from 6 to 12 April 2023.
The exhibition brings together twelve photographs examining the space between outward expression and inner experience. The exhibition is currently on view at Art Place Lagos through 12 April.
The exhibition’s clearest point of entry is Escape, a black-and-white portrait of a woman whose eyes are covered by several hands, lit so that only her nose and lips are clearly visible against a dark background. The hands are placed across her face from both sides, which means the viewer has her face but not her gaze.
Kareem says the picture is about “being seen and being unable to express yourself freely.” The hands could be read as restraint or as protection, and the photograph does not specify which. “We are looking at her, but we cannot make the usual connection through her gaze,” he says. “That interruption is important to the image.
For me, its meaning is not exhausted by one interpretation.”
The image was constructed deliberately. “I wanted to create an image that would make people question what it means to see someone without necessarily understanding what they are experiencing,” Kareem says. “The positioning of the hands, the use of light and shadow, and the decision to conceal her eyes were all important to how the image came
together.”
Kareem has chosen not to identify the woman. “What matters to me is not that viewers know who she is, but that they take the time to consider what the image evokes and the questions it raises about expression, concealment and the experiences we may never fully understand in another person.”
The same line of enquiry runs through the rest of the exhibition. Kareem describes the idea behind the title this way: “It is not necessarily a secret. Sometimes, it is something a person has not found the words for. Sometimes, it is something they know but aren’t ready to share. And sometimes, it is an experience that becomes difficult to explain once you try to put it into words.” In the exhibition, silence is treated as more than an absence of speech.
It can mean restraint, uncertainty, vulnerability, or a decision to keep something private. Each of the twelve photographs has its own visual character, and each asks viewers to consider that the person pictured has thoughts, memories and circumstances that cannot be read from appearance alone.
The exhibition grows out of questions Kareem has pursued since he began photographing in January 2022. He took up the camera, he says, to explore “questions I didn’t always know how to express in words,” including how people relate to their surroundings, how they carry their experiences, and how much of a person’s story is invisible to an outside observer. His practice now addresses identity, memory, spirituality and belonging. Memory, he says, means we don’t experience the world “only as it is in the present.” Belonging works in a similar way: “It isn’t always just about where you are;
it can also be about the things that connect you to a place, even when those connections are difficult to explain.”
According to Kareem, the exhibition does not set out to supply answers. “I didn’t begin with all the answers,” he claims. “In many ways, I began because I wanted to understand them better.” Visitors are invited to look closely, to notice what each photograph leaves open, and to consider how their own assumptions shape what they see.
Exhibition: What Remains Unsaid Artist: Ibrahim Kareem
Venue: Art Place Lagos, Lagos, Nigeria
Dates: 6 to 12 April 2023
Opening: 6 April 2023, 2 p.m.
Works: Twelve photographs
About Ibrahim Kareem: Ibrahim Kareem is a Nigerian fine-art photographer whose work explores identity, memory, spirituality and the relationship between people and place.
He began his photographic practice in January 2022, and his work approaches human experience through the figure, attending to what can be seen and what stays out7 of reach. What Remains Unsaid is his first solo exhibition.
