London-based multidisciplinary artist Adébayo Bolaji debuts his most sensorial body of work in Mumbai
A Dance For Protection
One morning in Jaipur’s old town, artist Adébayo Bolaji found himself staring at a weather-worn building, long stripped of its original purpose. A banana vendor had claimed its doorstep. “It was like history and present need were negotiating space,” he recalls. For the London-based British artist of Nigerian descent, the moment encapsulated what he came to India seeking: Not spectacle, but survival; not monuments, but meaning.
Currently on view at Nature Morte in Colaba, What the Flame Could Never Burn is Bolaji’s first solo exhibition in India — an incandescent series of paintings created during a month-long residency in Jaipur earlier this year. Known internationally for his lyrical visual language, where allegory, abstraction, and theatre intertwine, Bolaji arrived in India with no fixed agenda. “I chose to stay mostly in Jaipur and let the place reveal itself slowly,” he shares.
Adebayo Bolaji
The show is a luminous departure from his earlier paintings, which draw from his Yoruba heritage and grapple with identity, transformation, and the spiritual residue of trauma. But here, the palette softens. There’s dance in each brushstroke, rhythm in the repetition. It’s not just a change in mood; it’s a shift in energy.
That shift was shaped by more than just Rajasthan’s heat and stone. “I spent time studying Indian religious iconography, patterns, gestures,” he explains, “and found a strange familiarity with Yoruba symbolism. The hands, the ritual, the rhythm — it was like meeting an ancient cousin.” He also immersed himself in sound — drumming, traditional music, street noise — until his painting process became what he calls “visual percussion.”
The paintings — like ‘The Dancer & The Peacock’, ‘Awakening’, and ‘To Be In Love Again’ — pulse with motion. Figures emerge from kaleidoscopic colour fields, half-formed and half-felt. There’s a kind of visual choreography at play. “I approach painting the way I approach directing a play,” points out Bolaji, who is also a trained theatre director. “Each canvas is a character. Together, they form a movement.”
While Western audiences often interpret his work through postcolonial lenses, Bolaji hopes Indian viewers will engage with each painting more sensorially, with less analysis and more absorption. “Don’t try to decode the painting,” he advises. “Let it move through you, like a song you’re hearing for the first time.”
For Bolaji, India wasn’t just an inspiration — it was a conversation. “I felt my identity deepen here,” he says. With plans to return for future collaborations and performances, this exhibition is only the first step. “Too often, art history is told through a Western gaze…” he muses, adding, “but India has so much to say, so much that deserves to be seen and heard. I’m not here as a guest — I’m invested in the story.”
WHAT: What the Flame Could Never Burn by Adébayo Bolaji
WHEN: Till August 2, Monday to Saturday 11 am to 7 pm
WHERE: Nature Morte, 3rd floor, A block, Dhanraj Mahal, Apollo Bunder, Colaba
CONTACT: 98716 36999
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