In The Witness, Damilola Opedun brings Makoko and Venice into the same field. Across this new body of work, stilt houses, canoes and corrugated roofs are interwoven with the dome of Santa Maria della Salute, the lions of the Ca’ d’Oro and the façade of the Palazzo Cavalli-Franchetti, all emerging through layered surfaces of oil, light and shadow, holding two cities shaped by water within a single picture plane.
Venice appears through the language of monument, beauty and inheritance, while Makoko appears through structure, community and lived invention. Opedun holds both with equal reverence, and from that evenness comes the show’s central question: what makes one floating city a cultural treasure and another a problem to be solved?