Sisi

Name: Sisi
Brand: Raknida
Price: 45.0 USD
Availability: InStock

Christian Okwananke

Watercolour of two young women walking side by side in green outfits and green gele headwraps, one with a black handbag, the other with a white handbag, looking up at her friend.

$45.00

Christian Okwananke paints sisi, the Yoruba word for a young woman in her prime. Two friends in matching green and gele are caught mid-stride and mid-conversation in loose watercolour.

Sisi 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 →

Ask Christian Okwananke what sisi means and he reaches for a whole stage of life. It is the Yoruba word, he says, for a girl becoming a woman, from her mid-teens to about twenty-five. These are the years people describe as flowers that blossom. In those years young women are "the talk of the town" and "young, free and want to explore and experiment."

He painted two of them in 2022, dressed alike in green, gele tied high, handbags in hand, walking together toward somewhere worth dressing for. The one on the right turns to look up at her friend, lips pursed mid-word. Christian lets the green bleed into the yellow and blue around them, so the whole sheet seems to move at their pace. Sisi is that age caught in passing: confident, shared, and gone a little faster than anyone expects.

Motifs in this work

Matching green and gele: friends dressed alike for the same occasion

The upward glance: closeness, and a conversation still going

Bleeding washes: a moment moving too quickly to hold still

Edition: Edition of 20 in each size · 20 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.
Year: 2022
Includes: Your numbered artwork and its Cultural Passport.

Size	Sheet	Image	Museum-Quality Print only	Framed	Available
S	8 × 10 in	6½ × 8 in	$45	+$65	20

The artist

Christian Okwananke

Undeclared · Lagos, Nigeria · 1 works on Raknida

Christian Okwananke is a Lagos-based artist working in watercolour and mixed media. He lets colour run and bleed past the edges of his figures, so his pictures feel caught in passing rather than posed. His subjects come from Nigerian life at both ends of its range. In Sisi, two friends in matching green walk out together in their prime. These are the years when, as he puts it, young women are "the talk of the town". In Silent Cry, two young mothers from the camps of the northeast carry their infants and a grief that cannot find its voice.

View full profile →All 1 works →