Janus 1

Name: Janus 1
Brand: Raknida
Price: 55.0 USD
Availability: InStock

Ibrahim Buhari Gambo

Black-and-white illustration in playing-card format: two mirrored profiles facing outward, a central flower, crowned birds, roundels, sunburst rays and corner rosettes.

$55.00 – $125.00

Two profiles turn away from each other around a central flower in Ibrahim Buhari Gambo's Janus 1. The mirrored black-and-white design is built like the back of a playing card.

Janus 1 is a Studio Edition: 20 museum-quality art prints in each size, each numbered in its white border. Every artwork comes with its Cultural Passport.

The Cultural Passport

Every order comes with the heritage documented.

Digital, emailed when your order ships: the work's story, the tradition it draws on and how it was made. 5 × 7 in (13 × 18 cm), ready to print and frame beside the work.

How it works →

Fold it down the middle and nothing would be lost. Ibrahim Buhari Gambo builds Janus 1 like the back of a playing card, and at its centre sets two faces in profile, back to back, a small crowned bird beneath each. Janus, the Roman god of doorways, looked forward and back at once. One face watches what has been, the other what is coming, and the flower between them is the present: the only place either can stand. Every ray and roundel is drawn in black and white, so nothing distracts from the question the picture asks: which way will you face?

The culture · Ancient Rome. Janus, the two-faced Roman god of doorways, gates and beginnings, looked to the past and the future at once. January, the door of the year, still carries his name.

Motifs in this work

Back-to-back profiles: one face to the past, one to the future

Central flower: the present, blooming between the two gazes

Crowned birds: small sovereign figures beneath each face

Edition: Edition of 20 in each size · 60 across all sizes. Further runs possible once a size sells out, each tagged (Run 2). Edition numbers count the works sold through Raknida; the artist may also sell their own editions of this work.
Numbering: Number, title and artist printed in the white border.
Printing: Museum-quality giclée with archival pigment inks on museum-grade cotton fine art paper.
Includes: Your numbered artwork and its Cultural Passport.

Size	Sheet	Image	Museum-Quality Print only	Framed	Available
S	9 × 12 in	7½ × 10½ in	$55	+$65	20
M	18 × 24 in	15½ × 22 in	$85	+$119	20
L	24 × 32 in	21¼ × 30 in	$125	+$179	20

The artist

Ibrahim Buhari Gambo

Undeclared · Abuja, Nigeria · 3 works on Raknida

Ibrahim Buhari Gambo is an Abuja-based artist who works and signs as Mojozorro, sometimes shortened to MZ. He draws in black and white only, and he fills every surface: dense, often mirrored compositions of cross-hatching, roundels, rays and flowers, with every line placed with intent. Symmetry and density do the work in his pictures, and the reward goes to whoever looks longest. He borrows freely, from classical myth to the ornament of playing cards, and turns what he borrows into fields of pattern that hold the eye a long time.

View full profile →All 3 works →