A changing relationship with automobiles is reshaping what car culture looks like in Nigeria.
For a long time, much of that culture was centred on ownership, maintenance, modification and the social value attached to particular cars. Today, interest in automobiles increasingly extends into fashion, photography, collecting, events, gaming and design.
Zeus3D founder Leslie Abiola sees interior spaces as another part of that evolution.
‘The people who really love cars don’t only think about them when they are driving,’ Abiola says. ‘It becomes part of their taste. You see it in what they watch, what they collect and even the conversations they have. So why shouldn’t it become part of the way they design their spaces?’
That thinking informed Zeus3D’s large motorsport-inspired wall piece, which turns an automobile into décor, part sculpture and part statement piece.
The attraction is not difficult to understand. Motorsport cars have some of the most distinctive shapes in automotive design. Their lines, proportions, surfaces, colours and liveries are designed around performance, but those same qualities become aesthetic when the machine is held still.
‘You can look at a motorsport car without knowing every technical detail and still appreciate the design,’ Abiola says. ‘There is a beauty to the shape, the aerodynamics, the colours.’
The piece allows Zeus3D to bring some of the techniques associated with its automotive customisation work into another environment. Instead of treating customisation only as something done to a vehicle, the company is exploring how automotive identity can exist inside private homes, offices, lounges, automotive businesses and collectors’ spaces.
It is an interesting meeting point between two worlds that usually remain separate: the garage and the interior.