By Omolara Akintoye
From December 4th to 12th, 2022, The Shape of Memory unfolded as a quietly powerful fine art photography group exhibition at the MUSON Centre, Lagos bringing together artists who understand remembrance not as nostalgia, but as reconstruction.
Within this collective exploration, Mavic Chijioke Okeugo presented a body of work that anchored the exhibition in emotional precision. His photographs moved gently yet insistently, shaping memory as something tactile felt before it is understood. They lingered in the in-between spaces where personal history intersects with shared experience.
Exhibiting alongside Okeugo were distinguished fine art photographers Chidozie Maduka, Yinka Babalola, Anita Arts, and Andrew each contributing distinct visual languages that expanded the exhibition’s emotional range. Together, the artists treated memory not as a fixed archive, but as a living, shifting form.
At the core of the exhibition was an insistence on slowness. Viewers were invited to pause, to look again, to recognize how photographs can carry the weight of time without declaring it outright. Shadows, gestures, and silences operated as vessels for remembrance subtle yet enduring.
Okeugo’s contribution stood out for its restraint and psychological depth. His images did not dramatize memory; they respected it. They trusted the viewer to meet the work halfway, to bring their own recollections into the frame. In doing so, his photographs became mirrors reflecting not only what was shown, but what was remembered.
Audience engagement throughout the exhibition was marked by quiet attentiveness. Conversations emerged organically, often beginning with personal recollections sparked by the images on the walls. The MUSON Centre became, for a brief period, a shared site of remembrance.
The Shape of Memory concluded without spectacle but with impact. It reaffirmed photography’s capacity to hold time, emotion, and absence in a single frame, and to remind us that memory is not something we simply keep it is something we continuously reshape.
The exhibition has closed
The memories it awakened remain unfixed, unresolved, and deeply human.
