Silence Is Also a Voice by Iyanuoluwa Babalola
Explore Mondoir Studio
Medium: Acrylic on Canvas
Dimensions: 166.04 x 71.12 cm
Year: 2026
Price: $500.00 USD
Status: available
Silence Is Also a Voice explores what happens when the silence we have learned to carry becomes something we continue to live with. Through a figure with stitched lips and a screaming shadow, the work reveals the tension between outward composure and the emotions and truths we suppress. I created this piece as a continuation of Raised to Endure, Not to Speak, moving from how silence is learned to the consequences of what remains unspoken. It challenges the belief that silence is always a virtue, revealing how it can sustain abuse, injustice, favoritism, unhealthy relationships, harmful traditions, and social neglect. It speaks to the child who endures unfairness, the friend who remains silent out of loyalty, the spouse who suffers to preserve a family, the individual who carries emotional burdens alone, and the citizen who becomes accustomed to injustice. The screaming shadow represents the pain and truth that silence cannot erase, while the figures holding signposts offer a call to speak, heal, and take responsibility. The work invites viewers to reflect on our own moments of silence, why we choose it, and what it allowed to continue. and it reminds us that every silence communicates something and choosing to speak can be an act of courage, healing, and transformation.
Why collect this work?
A composed central portrait is set beneath a larger screaming apparition, presenting silence not as absence but as pressure contained within the same pictorial field.
- Babalola’s profile describes a practice concerned with healing, moral consciousness and storytelling. That stated focus helps explain the direct combination here of portraiture, written commands and protest imagery.
- In the photograph, red lines cross the central figure’s closed mouth, while a blindfolded figure covers their face nearby. Placards calling for speech oppose a list of instructions to preserve secrecy, making language a contested force.
- The catalogued medium is acrylic on canvas. Here it permits crisp highlights on the central face and less defined surrounding forms; the predominantly blue field binds portrait, apparition and demonstrators while preserving differences in visibility.
- The painting is particularly relevant to collections examining how figurative art represents public testimony. Its shift from one restrained mouth to collective signs frames speaking as a social act without resolving whether disclosure brings safety.
About the Artist
Iyanuoluwa Babalola
Iyanuoluwa Babalola is an artist on Mondoir Studio. Artistic discipline: Painting/ Acrylic and on Canvas. Based in Lagos, NG.
Nationality: Nigerian
My art explores healing, identity, cultural memory, and moral consciousness through expressive painting and visual storytelling.
