OROSI

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been in love with love. One Friday, in 2015, I went to Tejusho market in Yaba, Lagos, with my wife, Oroma, to search for t-shirt fabrics for some new experiment we had conjured up. We weren’t married then. It was easy to be in love. As we walked through the rows of stalls on the second-floor balcony of one of the market buildings, I saw a section of toilet bowls. The day was grey but energetic — we both loved to create and quickly get to the market to touch and feel materials.

Later that evening, we drove to our favourite getaway, a cozy retreat we loved because every detail felt like it was made with respect for each object’s essence, starting with the placement of villas between old trees. Before we slept, we started watching 2001: A space odyssey – a 3-hour-long epic and recipe for dozing after a long day of roaming. As she typically does, Oroma slept off first, and I soon followed. In between the surrealism of Odyssey and nodding off, I began vividly dreaming about a leafless tree, red, growing out of a black toilet bowl.