This work belongs to my Meta Abfillage series, a stage of my practice where I return to earlier paintings and layer them with collage, abstraction, and symbolic motifs. Meta Abfillage is both a technique and a philosophy: it allows past and present to coexist on the same surface, creating a dialogue between memory, survival, and time.
The underlying painting, created in 2022, depicts two young men on a basketball court a scene of vocation, vitality, and aspiration. It reflects the restless energy of youth, the pursuit of skill, and the search for meaning through play. In 2025, I revisited the canvas and layered it with newspaper collage and painted forms of cassava leaves, a recurring motif in my work. Cassava, as a crop, carries profound cultural weight in Nigeria: it is sustenance, survival, and collective memory.
Here, the basketball players are not erased but overlaid by cassava, creating a tension between ambition and endurance.
