Only a sculptor with extraordinary vision could transform an abandoned fuel tank into a meditation on national prosperity, misplaced priorities and the responsibilities of leadership.
Words Ireho Aito | Don’t Keep Your Art in the Finger! Images Akeem Muraina
There is something poetic about rain. It slows the pace of life and persuades us to revisit moments we may have gone past hurriedly. Rain reminds us that nature itself never rushes perfection.
On this Don’t Keep Your Art in the Finger! edition, the first Friday in July, with drops of rain here and there, one artist has quietly reminded us that masterpieces are not accidents. They are the fruits of years of incubation.
Akeem Muraina did not post a photograph of a new sculpture. Instead, he reached back to 2018, to the 20th Agbarha Otor Harmattan Workshop in Delta State, where he made his first attempt at using a discarded plastic fuel tank as an artistic medium. He shares a reflection on his social media platform;
“A rare look at my first attempt using a plastic fuel tank as a medium,” he wrote. “Stepping away from the discarded metal I usually work with, I later refined and developed this concept to produce the seven cow sculptures featured in my METALPHYSICS Alliance 1 exhibition at Signature Gallery in 2024.”
Those few sentences reveal something profound about creativity. Artists do not simply create works, they develop ideas. Sometimes the seed is planted years before anyone notices the tree.
When iBAND Magazine visited Muraina’s METALPHYSICS Alliance – The Cow, The Pastures and The Tenants with an invitation from renowned sculptor Dr. Adeola Balogun, it became clear that the plastic fuel tank was never just an object. It had become a language through which the sculptor interrogated Nigeria’s social, economic and political realities.
Explaining the symbolism behind the celebrated cows, Muraina wrote again;
“The cows here, seven of them, is a cue I took from one of the famous Biblical Joseph’s interpretation of the then king of Egypt’s dream about the seven fat cows. The seven fat cows represent the largesse of a buoyant economy.”
He continued with an even more pointed observation;
“The cows… were created from discarded plastic fuel tanks of motor vehicles. This perfectly relates to oil, the current nerve of my country’s economy and one of the cardinal focus of this show.”
Only a sculptor with extraordinary vision could transform an abandoned fuel tank into a meditation on national prosperity, misplaced priorities and the responsibilities of leadership.
Muraina has never been interested in recycling for its own sake. His practice is about redemption. What society abandons, he restores. What others overlook, he elevates. Waste becomes wisdom, and metal becomes metaphor.
That philosophy has continued to define his artistic journey.
At the 2025 Artzero Art Salon, iBAND Magazine encountered another dimension of his imagination through Igbebi. Rather than presenting motherhood literally, Muraina employed the image of a bird’s nest and incubating eggs to explore nurture, patience and growth. As the magazine observed, “every creation, like every child, deserves care, time, and a chance to grow.”
Looking back today, one begins to understand that the fuel tank experiment of 2018 and the Igbebi sculpture of 2025 are chapters of the same story. Both celebrate incubation. Both insist that meaningful creation demands patience. Both affirm that greatness is refined, and not rushed.
Perhaps that is why Muraina’s recent reflection resonates so deeply. In an era driven by instant gratification and viral moments, he reminds us that genuine artistic achievement often takes years to reveal itself.
Many creatives have abandoned ideas because they do not bloom immediately. Muraina kept faith with his. He returned to it, questioned it, refined it and eventually transformed it into one of the most memorable sculptural bodies of work in contemporary Nigerian art.
iBAND Magazine, Celebrating Visual Arts from the Original.
Africa | Visual Art | Lifestyle | Culture
