Fade
Rafiat Lamidi
This series shows photographs taken in December 2021 of the walls in the compound of my home in Ibadan, Nigeria. The walls have been painted for a while and the colour of the paint has washed off over time. After the cemented wall beneath was revealed in different patterns, I realised that there was a kind of subtle beauty in the result.
To come home for the holidays after a really hectic year was such a relief. I went through a series of depressive and anxiety episodes in 2021 that made me feel like I was lost. It was a painful process of shedding parts of myself to reveal who I was. I was just getting to understand what being queer meant for me as a Muslim and as someone who lives in a country where homophobia prevails and queerness is criminalised. I struggled to find my place in all the chaos of my existence, and in all that struggling and fighting, I could not find my voice for a while. I was not able to write as much as I used to or connect with works as I used to.
Seeing the paint fade off the walls brought beauty back to my soul. I could see myself in the walls, and everything I felt was summarised in a glance at the pictures I took. I could feel all the mess of me represented in truth.









Rafiat Lamidi is a lover of art who resides in Nigeria. She enjoys creating through writing, painting, and photography. Her works have been published in Kalahari Review, Kissing Dynamite, Stone of Madness Press, Iman Collective, Mambila Art, Analogies and Allegories Magazine, and Olney Magazine.