Sé òrûn jé ârâ?: Oluwasemilore Delano’s Work Wants us to Look Deeper

As an African, when I walked into Guest Artist Residency (G.A.S) Foundation for Oluwasemilore Delano‘s Sé òrûn ié ârâ? (Is the Sky Skin), the cow-esque paintings immediately transported me. I remembered watching children doodle on walls as they reveal the outline of their artistically-inclined mindset with each unhinged stroke. I thought of the entrapping graffitis that add patterns of characters to Lagos roads whilst expressing uninhibited thoughts, and the ex-voto and murals of devout artists that decorate shrines and betray their gestures of gratitude and commitment to their ancestral gods. As I stepped deeper into the G.A.S’ contemporary brutalist space and listened to Delano’s presentation, my eyes scanned the room and landed on the displayed paintings and I began seeing patterns of thoughtful and coordinated thinking that holds the work. 

Guest Artists Space (G.A.S.) Foundation, Șé òrûn jé ârâ – is the sky skin, 2026. Photo: Sylvester Bayode

The G.A.S. Foundation building is located in the affluent Oniru district of Victoria Island. It was conceived by renowned British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare and designed by Ghanaian-British architect Elsie Owusu, in collaboration with Lagos-based architect Nihinlola Shonibare. G.A.S is designed to blend traditional Yoruba heritage with contemporary brutalist aesthetics and serve as a live-work residency and project space for international artists, researchers, and curators. Residents are encouraged to think and engage in knowledge production and sharing through masterclasses, workshops, talks, or other forms of knowledge-sharing with students, peers, or the public. This context influenced the presentation and workshop of Delano, one of its current residents. 

The rainy and moderately cold evening opened with Delano’s residency research presentation. It traced her thinking around the relationships between land and sky. Delano revealed years of pondering and still ponders on the sky as a literal and metaphorical skin. By speaking, she invited listeners to ponder and observe how we understand our bodies beyond ourselves, reflecting on what practices of touch and intimacy with skin might mean within a world shaped by difference. The presentation compelled us to think about the mysterious relationship between land and sky. To answer, Delano spoke of long train commutes between Kaduna and Abuja where she recorded the open, arresting, and almost-endless landscape. The nostalgia-ridden tone changed when she spoke on hurdles to a tourist-esque exploration of Nigeria: avoidable accidents and insecurity. 

Guest Artists Space (G.A.S.) Foundation, Șé òrûn jé ârâ – is the sky skin, 2026. Photo: Sylvester Bayode

During these trips, she encountered a herd of cattle and was enamoured by their arched and flat spine. Cattles, by design, move with their back parallel to the ground, showing no upward arching or dipping. Contrary to humans, their faces aren’t the first site of perception. When we see them, their flat spine and evenly distributed weight commands attention. This, as Delano expressed, was interesting to think about the spine as another entrance into the animal’s soul. 

Rested between slumped shoulders held the moon in waiting, 2025, Oil paint, charcoal, chalk on plywood, 162 x 244cm.

In Nigeria, herds of cattle don’t inspire romantic feelings but tragic ones. The Fulani herdsmen are traditionally nomadic and semi-nomadic pastoralists who move large herds of cattle across Nigeria. For decades, their livelihoods relied on seasonal migration from the arid north to the fertile pastures of the south and Middle Belt regions. However, environmental factors like climate change, desertification, and water scarcity have forced herders further south into areas heavily populated by sedentary farming communities. This shift has triggered ongoing competition over land, grazing routes, and agricultural resources, causing massive communal friction and bloody confrontations. According to records from the Nigerian House of Representatives and international security monitors, the conflict has claimed more than 19,000 to 60,000 lives since 2001, periodically generating higher annual casualty rates than the Boko Haram insurgency. Entire rural villages have been destroyed in coordinated nighttime attacks, which are often followed by deadly reprisal assaults from local farming militias. 

Guest Artists Space (G.A.S.) Foundation, Șé òrûn jé ârâ – is the sky skin, 2026. Photo: Sylvester Bayode

During her presentation, Delano spoke about this violence that has displaced millions of agrarian citizens, forcing them into overpopulated Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps and triggering a severe national food security crisis. The complex issue has been heavily aggravated by the breakdown of traditional land-dispute mediation, a weak national security response, and the proliferation of illegal small arms, transforming a resource conflict into deeply rooted ethnic and religious hostilities. Thus, when she spoke of the migration of herds of cattle, it was with the consciousness of the social, economic, and political tension that presence carries in Nigeria. 

Delano is a Nigerian-British visual artist, who works between Lagos and London. Her practice explores memory, lineage, and Black spatial consciousness through drawing and sculpture. A recurring question in her practice is the return to the question of what it means to depict the figure, not just as form, but as a site of perception. As an artist, she is interested in what it means to look, especially when looking is shaped by materials that push back and have their own histories, contexts, and attitudes. From the trapped pictures in the presentation, videos of empty landscapes, and the Aluminium Pot Moulder Society, Saki Headquarters, Oyo state, and sketches of cows in various forms with moons decorating the frames, the motif of looking returns in new forms and force.   

Guest Artists Space (G.A.S.) Foundation, Șé òrûn jé ârâ – is the sky skin, 2026. Photo: Sylvester Bayode

As the evening ended, Sé òrûn ié ârâ? asked us to stay patient, open, and curious about our environment, self, and the world. It encourages us to understand ourselves through the understanding of our landscape and sky. The evening ended by moving into a hands-on monoprinting workshop, where participants are introduced to the basic techniques of monoprinting before developing their own prints in response to the themes explored. The session closes with a collective reflection, where participants reviewed and discussed the work.