This latest addition to the artist’s oeuvre is presented in accordance with the three themes of “Personal Structures”: Time is expressed in the artist’s signature collage paintings and bricolage photographs; Space is aptly represented by site-specific installations mirroring the interior of Owambe parties, and; Existence is portrayed through an original short film.

Meanwhile, these three elements of the exhibition are seamlessly woven together with sound and smell to create a multisensory experience that lingers in the museum of memory for exhibition attendees. This medley of mediums, metaphors and motifs also symbolically represents the merger of the material (physical) and immaterial (metaphysical) at the heart of Owambe culture.

The show title, A wà ńbẹ̀, which translates from Yoruba (a language native to southwestern Nigeria and spoken in several other parts of West Africa) as “we are there” is both a statement of celebration and reconciliation; a celebration (homecoming) of how far people of African descent have come and a reconciliation (homegoing) of hitherto untold Afro-diasporic stories. Indeed, the artist is present in Venice, as is their culture on this global stage. Ultimately, Shenjobi is inviting foreigners everywhere (at the Biennale and elsewhere) to carefully consider Owambe and its intrinsic act of celebration as an equally cultural and existential phenomenon that—like its host city of Venice whose many parts are linked by countless bridges—is itself a bridge between and beyond Time, Space and Existence; a meeting and mediating point, to not only meet to be merry but more importantly to gather as a global community to mediate the past and future through the lens of the present from a uniquely contemporary African point of view. “It’s about how we all come together, regardless of our backgrounds and tribes, to celebrate the sheer joy of life,” says Shenjobi.