From what is popular knowledge about children, restlessness is one of the ingredients that completes the qualification as a child.
However, in this image we are standing in awe of a complete irony staring us in the face. A child is still while a bird is having a free day on her hair.
This image at first glance has the effects of meditation, and things that happen within, borne quietly, invisibly and without applause.
This image was shown at Samson Oriyomi Yusuf’s exhibition What We Carry at Mydrim Gallery June 2-6 2020.
The image features a young girl in a white shirt with a bowed face gazing downwards, away from the viewer towards something the frame does not permit us to see.
A small colourful bird is relaxed on her braided hair. There is a calm that pushes forth from this image to the viewer, the sort that draws one into the thoughts of the little girl. The calm gets stronger and almost emotional as one looks at the image longer.
The image says hold on and assimilate the delicate state of suspension between the thought and the calmness.
The bird is like a hinge, it is small, almost hidden but very presence. It is the element that begins the questioning for the viewer, how to begin to decipher the symbolism and connections.
Birds have always carried symbolism but there is a lightness with which this bird is in conversation with the hair it is perched on, suggesting connection and harbor with no intention of flight anytime soon.
Yusuf replaces drama with calm, the bird is there but doesn’t dominate. In consultation with the theme, Yusuf suggests to us that What We Carry doesn’t necessarily have to be a weight that drowns, but it can be light, almost without weight but with consequences. The girl’s expression avoids definition, and looking away into something we are not privy to makes definition a more difficult task. Is she downcast, shy or just caught away in the children’s fascination by little things. She is not in the face of the viewer, she is in her own world, withdrawing silently and inwardly, without spectacle but commanding attention.
In contemporary portraiture discuss, the gaze is usually a tool for commanding presence and confidence, but Yusuf presents a differing narrative with this introspective gaze.
Her braided hair maintains its meticulous arrangement and order in contrast with the bird’s unpredictability. The hair is a representation of care, time, and social ritual, the bird is interrupting this. Together, they form a single fragile frame of an equilibrium, making the image articulate the exhibitions theme, while avoiding the literal burdens of visual expressions.
Yusuf doesn’t allow the work to explain itself. The work leaves no clues for the viewer also, neither does it close the door on interpretation. It allows the viewers intelligence and patience to align while engaging the work.
This portrait allows its meaning to unravel as the viewer slowly pays attention. The image is not about fragility, yet it is tender. It only asks to pause, lower your inner voice and consider what you to might be carrying¬¬––quietly and alone.
By Tajudeen Sowole