Temitope Fagade makes relief sculpture feel urgent

Temitope Fagade’s cast metal reliefs bring a centuries-old technique into contemporary focus—celebrating Yoruba heritage, everyday work, and figures history often leaves out. In works such as “Work and Pride,” labourers take the centre stage while older Wester

When most people picture relief sculpture. they’re pulled toward marble saints. classical temples. or the kind of monumental façades meant to outlast empires. Temitope Fagade starts from a different place—casting metal reliefs that turn ordinary labour into the kind of subject usually reserved for deities and victorious heroes.

In “Work and Pride,” seven figures take the space where grand narratives often go. There’s a hunter and a fisherman. but what steadies the composition is how the work treats everyday contribution as worthy of permanence. Right at the centre. larger than the others. Fagade places a mother—the “mother. the greatest of all labours”—raising a child whose potential. as the work frames it. could change the world and influence many lives.

The characters’ labour and dress point back to Yoruba heritage, and the relief’s sense of recognition feels deliberate. In London’s public visual language, statues tend to represent and venerate monarchs, aristocracy, and military commanders. Fagade’s choice of figures—workers and sustainers instead of rulers—pushes the viewer toward a different question: who gets celebrated. and who is left to do the work without ever being rendered monumental.

The impulse also echoes the Soviet tradition of public statuary dedicated to workers. That connection is clear in the contrast to the elevated silhouettes Western art often foregrounds: the famous “Worker and Kolkhoz Woman” statue. with its giant worker and farm woman. becomes a useful reference point for how labour can be turned into icon.

In contemporary art, a similar theme appears in the work of British sculptor Thomas J. Price, who creates oversized statues that are composites of multiple black men and women. His motivation is explicit: responding to the underrepresentation of black men and women in art by placing sculptures meant to represent black men and women across the UK. the US. and other countries where they have been shown. Fagade’s project reads alongside that same drive—representing the unrepresented—and it’s part of why “Work and Pride” doesn’t feel like an antiquarian exercise in form.

What makes Fagade’s approach stand out even further is the medium itself. Metal relief is painstaking. a process seldom seen in contemporary art. and it gives the works an authority that doesn’t rely on spectacle. For a sense of scale and historical ambition. the text compares Fagade’s reliefs to Lorenzo Ghiberti’s gilded-bronze doors of the Florence baptistery—works that Michelangelo referred to as the “Gates of Paradise. ” with the unofficial name still carrying the weight of that admiration. Another comparison points to the reliefs on the doors of 9 Millbank in London. modelled on those in Florence and depicting scenes of scientific advancement.

But where those historical examples linger in loftier moments—technological triumph. artistic splendour—Fagade turns toward the “down-to-earth activities of everyday people.” The contrast is sharp: the daily labour that keeps societies functioning is given the same sculptural gravity. as if to insist that the overlooked deserve the gold. the attention. the careful carving.

He does reach back to historical grandeur in his metal relief of Queen Amina, also known as Amina of Zazzau. She was a legendary 16th-century warrior queen who ruled the city-state of Zazzau in present-day northern Nigeria. Yet even that nod to history carries a different emphasis. The work references a history that Western art—both historical and contemporary—does not discuss.

Between Yoruba visual culture and the monumental nature of metal relief. Temitope Fagade is contributing to the development of contemporary African relief sculpture. His work highlights indigenous artistic heritage while bringing it to new audiences. aligning with what contemporary viewers are looking for in art: not just beauty. but representation and recognition.

For now, Fagade’s return to a medium “largely consigned to art history” feels like more than a stylistic choice. It is a way of refusing the usual hierarchy of subjects—moving relief sculpture from the realm of centuries-old veneration into a present tense where mothers. hunters. fishermen. and the work that sustains communities are treated as central.

More information on Temitope Fagade may be found on his website. All images are copyrighted by the artist.

Temitope Fagade relief sculpture cast metal relief Yoruba heritage Work and Pride Queen Amina Amina of Zazzau Thomas J. Price contemporary African sculpture Lorenzo Ghiberti Gates of Paradise cultural representation London public art