Leah Sharibu

The Leah Sharibu project was conceived as a performative and visual response to the 2018 Dapchi school abduction and its national implications. Rather than producing a conventional portrait or documentary representation, Tejuoso approached the subject through symbolic embodiment.

In this body of work, the artist appeared wearing a niqab and wire-framed glasses—an intentional visual strategy designed to provoke attention and discomfort. The gesture was not imitation but confrontation: a way of forcing viewers to reckon with the layers of identity, religion, vulnerability, and visibility embedded in the abduction narrative. By inserting himself into the visual field, he disrupted passive spectatorship and transformed the gallery space into a site of moral questioning.

The works under this project—including the piece exhibited in Ijegba, the hometown of Wole Soyinka—extend beyond individual tragedy. They interrogate memory, national conscience, and the politics of silence surrounding school kidnappings in Nigeria.

Through material choice, costume, and site-specific presentation, Tejuoso reframed the abduction not as distant news, but as an unresolved historical wound demanding sustained public attention.