On the 25th of April, I was at the opening of Cynthia Ugwudike’s debut exhibition, In The Eyes Of My Lover, a peculiar exhibition with the beautiful pieces made with combined techniques of punch needling, rug tufting and needle felting to produce a very textural and colorful collection of images.

The collection ranged from self-portraits(Plantain and Eggs, Again? Tarkwa Bae, companion pieces The Pink Duvet and Under The Pink Duvet and closeups Portrait Of Cyn and Lilac For Both Pls) to more abstract pieces(Over Pouring, All Consuming and Love Island) as the walls glowed with the frames, the room adorned with colored pieces of yarn and wool, every artwork emanating an aura of love and intimacy.

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“Everything else is a dream except me,” Cynthia says, taking the full house on a tour through the exhibition, her words a testimony to the apparent solipsism of the exhibition, she recreates these images of herself from the perspective of her lover who is also herself, she recounts having to step out of her own body, view herself from the third person and learn how to love herself by recreating these intimate moments. She captures still moments of the mundane nature of her day to day life, calling herself a character of routine, her fingernails and toenails are always painted lilac, she eats plantains and eggs every single day, she thinks her side profile is beautiful, she goes to the beach, Tarkwa Bay, once every month with her friend(s). The exhibition is her story of how love doesn’t need to be grandiose or full of what people call magical moments, love is being seen, being accepted, even when you’re predictable, living a loop that is your comfort zone, someone still sees you and loves you, for who you are, and in the process of making the pieces for this exhibition, Cynthia learned that that person was herself, and that’s where the magic lies.

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Her black cat, Mani, her companion and if I may, her muse, is the only other living figure present in the artworks apart from herself. In every frame, Cyn is the only stationary figure represented, everything else is fluid, moving, and in specific frames where she’s at home, Mani’s shown and perceived as a sort of representation of her comfort, his dark fur and closeness to her familiarizes us with how much he’s also a part of her life and love, although not explicitly stated(she doesn’t have to, anyone who has come to see Cynthia’s art and is oblivious to the importance of her cat in her life doesn’t know her).

Returning back to the fact that Cyn is the only stationary, solid figure in the frames, an interesting detail is that in every one of them, her face is blank, emotionless, she explains that she chose to instead represent her emotional expression through the tufted backgrounds engulfing the painting, the colors purple, white, blue, orange, showing the aura of joy surrounding the Cyn figure, their pulsating softness echoing a vibrant radiance communicating that she loves, is loved and is love.

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The abstract pieces do not have Cyn portrayed in them, but instead they are representations of a feeling, emotional states, Over Pouring, which is stylized like ocean waves, symbolizes the act of loving a person with their permission, the love you have for them being allowed to freely flow out of you and into them. All Consuming, the most formless, scattered piece in the exhibition, is a tale of a different kind of love, in this story, you have all this love to give but no consent, no acceptance, so it grows and grows inside you until it starts to spill out from your sides, it’s obsessive love, an incomplete red circle(the only time this deep, strong color is shown in the exhibition as a disruptor) is shown to keep the love inside but is failing. Love Island contains every single color from all the pieces used in the exhibition, it’s whole, a representation of love as a place, a place to put your feet in and remind yourself that you are loved, deformed hearts clustered around, absorbing you into your own misshapen conception of love, your own heart, your own home.

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The show is a triumph of romantic love and self-love, an encompassing rainbow show of textures, a DIY hurrah as our main character had to put everything together herself, this being a skill she had taken up just a year ago and had to learn herself, starting from making rugs and then transitioning that into more of an artistic endeavor, it hasn’t been easy for her, logistical issues have given her sleepless nights, she’s had to dye the wool herself, persevere through days without electricity, so much of her time, energy and finances were put into this exhibition just so she could invite people into her world, make them see and feel just as she had.

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“In The Eyes Of My Lover is meant to turn the mirror on us and show how we see ourselves and how we love ourselves when there is no one.”-Exhibition Curator, Chisom Peter-Job.

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After getting to interact with Cynthia’s art, see people interact with it and her, and her interact with them, it’s beautiful that experiences like this still find their way to blossom in this ecosystem. The philosophy of it doesn’t go unnoticed, in a world where no truth is ever fully certain and you try to reconcile how alone we all are in this world with being convinced that the people around you truly exist, if all we have to believe in is our own consciousness and stepping out of our own bodies to look at ourselves the only way we can be tangible, if you say to Cynthia, “I think therefore I am,” through this exhibition she’ll say back to you,“I love therefore I am.”