ARTFAR

AN EXHIBITION BY Gerald Isiguzo

MAY 2025

Opening night 16th May 6pm

GERALD ISIGUZO, OP is a Dominican artist from Nigeria, with a background in BA Fine and Applied Arts (University of Nigeria Nsukka), BA Philosophy (University of Ibadan), BTh Theology (Pontifical University of Thomas Aquinas, Rome), and MA Theology (Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA). After his philosophical and theological studies at the Dominican Institute in Ibadan, Nigeria, Gerald is currently studying on the MA Contemporary Dialogues programme at the Swansea College of Art, UWTSD where he has launched ARTFAR as his major project under the Confirmative Praxis module.

Exhibition Statement

ARTFAR, the project name for “Art’s Response To Faith And Reason”, represents a journey of faith and reason, a quest for meaning and truth, and the resilience of the human, creative intelligence in seeking answers and offering responses to “the fundamental questions which pervade human life: Who am I? Where have I come from and where am I going? Why is there evil? What is there after this life?” (John Paul II, 1998). 

To respond to these questions, my current practice, which resides in the interplay between theology and the arts, draws a three-fold analogy from the Biblical accounts of creation, the Fall, and redemption, taking these as a starting point for exploring coherent, theological possibilities in contemporary art. 

Influenced by the works El Anatsui, I playfully engage with “the used and dumped” of our physical and social environment – I grapple with its materiality through semiotic considerations and ‘kenotic’ mediations; I consider its theological possibilities, aiming to develop these by extended analogies beyond material representations and medium-specific boundaries, while deploying “the used and dumped” as an overarching metaphor for exploring narratives about the social and spiritual conditions of a humanity that is “wounded but not destroyed” – a powerful theological metaphor for rethinking historical and contemporary perspectives along socio-economic and political thresholds.

Contact Gerald artmaster2022@gmial.com or @geralds_art_exnihilo.