Artist: Luke Agada

Roberts Projects presents Between Two Suns, a solo exhibition of recent paintings by Chicago-based artist Luke Agada. As if mapping the blurred and sinewy terrain of his psyche, Agada paints in pursuit of visualizing the “third space”: an internal precipice at which interdependent forces of anxiety, bravery, stability, chaos, survival and collapse must be wrestled with. In a palette reminiscent of the rusted rooftops, rugged roads and gleaming sun of his native home in Lagos, Nigeria, the artist carves lithe, liminal forms—mental and spatial abstractions—that depict the tension between memory, experience and theory. Through his practice, Agada dissects the anatomy of adaptation, pictorial planes wherein his individual study of complex sociopolitical systems seeds chimerical visions of migratory bodies.

Agada was introduced to the concept of “third space” through the writings of postcolonial theorist Homi K. Bhabha, an Indian scholar born in the mid-twentieth century who argues that each person exists as a unique hybrid of identity factors such as ancestry, geography, and authority—compounding factors that shape the consciousness of the colonizer and the colonized. Infusing this sociological phenomenon with literary and scientific voices—from Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart to Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection—Agada’s compositions articulate the relentless physical and psychic transit that migrants endure. Each brushstroke reflects the strain of striving to establish a sense of place and simultaneously maintaining a connection to homeland, all while facing the endless obstacles imposed by a capitalist, globalized society.

In this painterly iteration of “third space,” Agada develops a visual vocabulary that fuses surrealist ideation, automatist process and abstract-expressionist gesture. Just as he resists concrete references to his theoretical influences, he aspires to distill the constellation of archival photographs, diaristic writing, historic painters and familiar landscapes that orbit his mind as he works—seeking forms that imagine, rather than explain, the texture of sensations like tension and transition. He embraces a creative method that prioritizes his expressive freedom and accepts the limitations of his medium to fully communicate the intricacies of his conceptual visions. Agada’s scenes occupy a fractured axis, a destabilizing void wherein he seeks to reconcile fluctuating hierarchies of belonging.

The exhibition’s title, Between Two Suns, refers to the artist’s devotion to meditating in the moment of suspension, negotiating the distortions that emerge from unjust systems of labor, class and power. By depicting states of mimicry, camouflage, and metamorphosis without the context of a precise body or place, Agada’s paintings are rooted in the undefined terrain of the “alien”—both seeking and repelling assimilation within a dominant culture. As Agada sees it, “Living ‘between two suns’ is a constant pursuit of balance that can only be achieved by continuous movement. Nothing is ever really in a state of rest; it’s a law of nature.”

About the Artist

Luke Agada (b.1992, Lagos, Nigeria; lives and works in Chicago, IL) received his undergraduate degree at the Federal University of Agriculture in Abeokuta, Nigeria. In 2023, he earned an MFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). He has exhibited at venues including Kristin Hjellegierde Gallery, Berlin, Germany; African Artist’s Foundation, Lagos, Nigeria and Gallery 1957, Accra, Ghana, among others. Agada is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships including The James Nelson Raymond Fellowship, The Helen Frankenthaler Award, The Janet and Russell Doubleday Award, The George and Ann Siegel Award and The Global Warming International Art Prize. Agada was a 2023 Artist in Residence at MASS MoCA. He is currently a Teaching Fellow at SAIC.