I Belong Here

I Belong Here was Ken’s solo exhibition at Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery in Berlin. After moving from Lagos to London in 2022, he began to think differently about the places and people that make a home. The exhibition brings together his own experience with stories from friends and family.

The paintings begin with photographs taken in and around homes in Lagos. Some figures welcome us into their rooms; others look back at us cautiously or turn toward a place beyond the frame. In The Traveler, Ken imagines a man he had seen waiting outside a passport office, finally able to move on to the next stage of his journey. The fences behind him recall the barriers that make such movement difficult.

In Her Point of View, a woman catches our gaze through a mirror while getting ready. In Chioma (Midnight Visit), a family friend stands at the doorway of a home she once had to learn to inhabit. These encounters are grounded in real people and their spaces. The paintings do not offer one neat definition of home; they show how it is made through everyday acts of presence.

An installation of personal belongings spilling from a painted suitcase brings that question into the gallery. The suitcase stands for what we carry across borders, and for how unsettling it can be to lose even an ordinary object tied to our sense of self. Across the exhibition, belonging emerges through memory, relationships and the spaces we learn to make our own.