A culmination of Onome Olotu’s practice while an M.F.A. student, THIS BODY IS UNDER REVIEW is a visual and physical representation of nights and days of research, experimenting and exploring, failures and successes, and above all, FUN in the last two years. The works in this exhibition display how the body is and has been seen and disciplined within social and cultural frameworks. Through painting, drawing, ceramic, and sculptural explorations, Olotu talks about the ways bodies are celebrated, policed, reshaped, and remembered, inadvertently becoming sites for negotiation.

The images draw on archival photographs, personal histories, and cultural references, including scenes of women from Igbo August Meetings and historical imagery such as Efik women in Calabar’s colonial-era fattening rooms. By reworking these materials through layers, texture, and gesture, Olotu speaks on how historical narratives about the body continue to shape contemporary perceptions of beauty and belonging.