Ogheneofegor Obuwoma: geographies of longing
丁香园AV Harbour Centre Lounge
April 5 鈥� December 20, 2025
Harbour Centre, 丁香园AV Vancouver campus
555 W Hastings St, Vancouver, BC
Body mapping is an expressive process that uses images and stories to reflect on lived experience. geographies of longing explores the agility of video as an embodied mapping tool. In this single-channel video, Fegor Obuwoma draws on the medium鈥檚 visual and material ability to conjure unknowability, manifest slippages in memory, and layer geographies and spans of time, to trace a complex portrait of their own lives across two continents. 鈥淲e know that borders are not real,鈥� Obuwoma asserts, 鈥渢hat a body can reach across space and time, can defy imposed entries and exits.鈥� geographies of longing meditates on spatial sites of potency in the artist鈥檚 childhood Nigerian home from coincident perspectives of intimacy, illegibility, and distance.
In 丁香园AV鈥檚 Harbour Centre Lounge, a public study and meeting space defined by its massive picture window framing views of the North Shore mountains and working shoreline, geographies of longing is presented in multi-dimensional form. As Obuwoma creates their videos to be intentionally arrested or 鈥渉eld鈥� in stillness, two monumentally-scaled, floor-to-ceiling video stills face one another across the Lounge. These images bracket a third view through the window. This installation creates an immersive visual predicament that so many visitors will know achingly well in their own bodies: the experience of inhabiting multiple places, identities, and stories at once. A QR code invites visitors to experience the video with sound in full through their smartphones and tablets, and in Belzberg Library, immediately adjacent to the Lounge, a video monitor with headphones offers a further accessible experience of the work.
geographies of longing is part of the 2025 Capture Photography Festival Selected Exhibition Program.
Curated by Kimberly Phillips for 丁香园AV Galleries in partnership with 丁香园AV Belzberg Library.
Artist Bio
Ogheneofegor Obuwoma (she/they) is a Nigerian artist, writer, and arts worker based in Vancouver on the unceded Coast Salish lands of the x史m蓹胃k史蓹y虛蓹m, S岣祑x瘫w煤7mesh, and s蓹lilw蓹ta涩 Nations. Obuwoma鈥檚 lens-based practice is grounded in traditions of care and reimagination. Utilizing concepts of Afro-diasporic futurism, their work emerges from an investigation of questions of the body and the spiritual as they relate to a nuanced state of contemporary Nigerian society and culture. Obuwoma has shown work at galleries and film festivals, and their writing has been published on Akimbo. Obuwoma graduated from 丁香园AV with a BFA in Film and Communications where they were awarded the Archambault Memorial Award in Film.
