The market as still life: Titilayo Samuel Olufemi’s ‘The Colour of Abundance’
BY OZOLUA UHAKHEME
Titilayo Samuel Olufemi’s contribution to ‘Where Memory Lives’, a group exhibition exploring memory, place, and identity presented at Nommo Gallery, Kampala, from 1–27 July 2024, examined the relationship between memory, labour, and place through images drawn from everyday urban environments.
In this body of work, Olufemi approaches the market not simply as a site of commerce, but as a space shaped by lived experience, cultural continuity, and the rhythms of daily life.
One of the most compelling works in the exhibition was ‘The Colour of Abundance’, a photograph depicting a densely arranged market stall overflowing with tomatoes, peppers, root vegetables, baskets, and containers.
At first glance, the image appears to record a familiar commercial setting, yet its significance lies in the way Olufemi transforms the marketplace into a carefully structured field of colour, texture, and spatial relationships.
Rather than directing attention toward a single subject, the photograph distributes visual importance across the entire frame. Produce, architecture, labour, and human presence exist in a state of visual equivalence, encouraging the viewer to move slowly through the image.
The photograph’s most striking quality is its treatment of abundance as both material reality and visual experience. Buckets of tomatoes repeat rhythmically throughout the composition, while woven baskets, weathered wood, and earthen textures create a layered visual language that speaks to continuity and survival.
The market becomes more than a place of exchange; it emerges as a space where everyday histories accumulate through routine acts of work, trade, and sustenance.
As with much of Olufemi’s practice, memory is approached through attention to the physical surfaces and material details of ordinary life.
The cues are subtle but persistent. Human figures occupy the edges of the composition rather than its centre. One woman disappears partially beyond the frame, while another turns away from the viewer, absorbed in her task.
Their presence is felt rather than asserted. The photograph resists the dramatic individualism often associated with portraiture, instead locating meaning within the relationships between people, objects, and environments. The stall itself, marked by use and adaptation, becomes an active participant in the image.
What ultimately distinguishes The Colour of Abundance is Olufemi’s compositional control. Repeated forms create a visual rhythm that guides the eye through the photograph, while the oranges and reds of the product punctuate an otherwise earthy palette.
These shifts between colour, texture, and density generate a balance between order and accumulation. The image occupies a space between observation and contemplation, encouraging a deeper engagement with the environment it depicts.
Throughout ‘Where Memory Lives’, Olufemi’s photographs suggest that memory resides not only in monuments, landscapes, or historic sites, but also within the ordinary spaces that sustain everyday life. In ‘The Colour of Abundance’, the marketplace becomes a vessel for cultural continuity and shared experience.
The work’s strength lies in its refusal of spectacle. Instead, it invites viewers to consider how labour, resilience, and belonging become embedded within the material fabric of place, transforming a familiar scene into a thoughtful reflection on the enduring relationship between people and their environments.
