There are truths that linger beneath the surface of our lives. Some are spoken aloud. Others remain buried beneath silence, longing, ritual, desire and forgetting.

Named after the Yorùbá word for "dream", Àlá gathers works that move between the surreal and waking life, between the familiar and the strange. Across photography, painting, poetry, fiction and more, artists turn their attention to labour, intimacy, faith, violence, home, togetherness and the self.

Here, the galamsey labourer stands beside the lyrical poet. The woman and her body emerge as sites of beauty, violence and strength. Landscapes bear the marks of extraction. There are reveries of home, its people and what surviving together means. Rituals are remembered, questioned and reimagined. Again and again, the body appears as archive, battleground, witness and site of transformation.

There is a compelling presence within these works, laid bare in ways that are at times uncomfortable and confronting. Some dwell in silence and inherited shame. Others rupture it entirely. Together, they resist any flattening of African experience into a singular narrative of pain, resilience or beauty.

These works do not soften their edges for easy consumption. They hold their gaze and invite us to dream, even if only for a while.