Whether it is the simple bliss of a bare-footed little boy, rolling an old and discarded car tire down a dirt road, or the wistful pensiveness of an aged mother; much of Adeyi Ameh’s work is a granular exploration of the permutations of human features that conjure up powerful feeling and emotion. The lived experience of Africans and Nigerians in particular provides the material for much of that exploration.
Scale is an essential aspect of His work; by magnifying the subject face for instance, he is able to evocatively articulate the wrinkles on a brow creased in thought, or the veins on the back of a drummers hand, thus bringing the viewer into the feeling of his subjects in the moment.
The deliberate austerity of media in many of the works also serve this purpose of directing the viewer to the raw emotion of his subjects. Whether it is the black and white charcoal pieces or his wood-burning (burning then etching of fiber boards), his subjects organically emerge from, then blend back into their backgrounds. In the wood-burning pieces, the natural texture of the fiber boards is masterfully co-opted into the artists’ story-telling.
Movement is intrinsic to the African experience; the energetic dynamism of African culture is another theme in Adeyi’s work in his technique of ‘creative destruction’ that permeates the works especially on the recurring subjects of dance and drumming.
There is also a nostalgic aspect to the works as well for those of the African diaspora who get the ‘inside joke.’ Though removed in space and time from the subject of these works, the expressive details of Adeyi Ameh’s work can serve as a powerful gateway to a different time, place and a whole other way of being.