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British Nigerian Visual Artists

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British Nigerian Visual Artists

Research piece by Alisa Demchenko

The Home From Home project aims to shine a spotlight on significant British Nigerians from across a range of sectors. In this post our researchers have undertaken a comprehensive review of British Nigerian Visual Artists.

Yinka Shonibare (b. 1962) 

 

Yinka Shonibare was born on the 10th of February in 1962 in London, England, in a wealthy Nigerian family. Later, when he was three years old, he and his family returned to Lagos, Nigeria. Later in his life, Yinka returned to the UK to study Fine Art at Byam Shaw School of Art, London and Goldsmiths College, London, where he received his Master’s degree in Fine Art.  

The British artist with Nigerian heritage is best known for exploring the ideas of authenticity, identity, colonialism, and power relations in often-ironic drawings, paintings, sculptures, photographs, films, and installations. The artist uses twisted sources of Western art history and literature to challenge the truth of contemporary cultural and national identities. 

Shonibare’s signature feature in his works is Dutch wax-printed fabric, created using a batik-like technique.  Dutch Wax prints are made of 100% cotton fabrics printed in bright colours, applying wax resin on the material before dipping it in dye. It was created in the Netherlands in the 1800s inspired by the reproduction of the original batik-like technique produced in Indonesia, where it was unsuccessful due to the societal dislike of prints. Later, Dutch wax prints increased in favour across West Africa. Hence, it became known as “African” cloth, where the themes, colours, patterns and names on the fabric have unique symbolism. 

In his work, Double Dutch (1994), Shonibare painted a rectangle on a wall and later put a grid of several little stretches on top of it covered with the Dutch wax-printed fabric.  

Figure 1. Yinka Shonibare, Double Dutch, 1994, emulsion and acrylic paint on textiles 50 panels: each 12 x 8 x 1in. (32 x 22 x 4.5 cm.) exhibited in London, Stephen Friedman.  

The work explores the Minimalist movement of repetition and the grid. The artwork is characterised by its colourful palette and carefully placed Dutch Wax prints fabric. The remarkable part of the artwork is its breakdown, where the viewer can admire different prints at once. As Shonibare says, “There is no need for me to make one big heroic painting. I can actually take the language of [a] big abstract painting and produce it in very small pieces, in fragments. I can actually break it down and reconstruct it.”  The artwork was sold to a private collection in the USA in 1998 for GBP 13,800.

In 2002, he was commissioned by Okwui Enwezor (Nigerian curator) to create one of his most recognised installations, Gallantry and Criminal Conversation, for Documenta XI. The work includes the signature Dutch Wax prints material and explores the topic of moral values and sexuality. The artwork is inspired by the phenomenon of the Grand Tour, a symbolic journey focusing on the art, culture and history of Europe (mainly France and Italy) that was believed to be the education for young ladies and gentlemen in the 17th and early 18th century. Shonibare shows the mysteries between public and private life, displaying hidden intimacies and exchanges. 

Figure 2. Yinka Shonibare, Gallantry and Criminal Conversation, 2002, 2 life-size fiberglass mannequins, 2 metal and wood cases, Dutch wax printed cotton, leather, wood, steel, Collection of Beth Rudin DeWoody, New York.  

In 2004, Shonibare was nominated for the Turner Prize. In 2008, his mid-career survey began at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, travelling to the Brooklyn Museum, New York and the Museum of African Art at the Smithsonian Institute, Washington D.C. In 2010, his first public art commission, Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle, was displayed on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, London. In 2013 Shonibare was elected a Royal Academician.  

His works are included in notable museum collections such as Tate, London; the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institute, Washington D.C.; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Moderna Museet, Stockholm and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.

https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/art-artists/name/yinka-shonibare-ra  

Bibliography 

 

Chris Ofili (b. 1968) 

Chris Ofili was born in 1968 in Manchester, England, in a Nigerian family where he was the second of four children. Both of his parents worked hard to provide a good living. When his parents divorced, his mother, May, worked for 30 years to support her children. As a small boy, Chris listened to many catholic stories when he visited the churches that stayed in his heart and later resulted in the source of his inspiration.  

In 1991 he graduated from the Chelsea College of Arts, and two years later, he finished his Master’s degree at the Royal College of Art, London. The following year he went to Berlin on an art scholarship, where he learnt how to transform his love of hip-hop into his art. However, as he grew up during a politically rough time, he witnessed many discrimination cases, which resulted in his exploration of race and identity issues.

In 1996 a “Cool Britannia” movement became popular as it showed artistic growth, cultural awakening and a political reset. In 1997 due to this movement, Ofili became one of the prominent artists of the time.

It exhibited many famous artists known as the Young British Artists group. The exhibition caused an enormous outrage due to Ofili’s work, The Holy Virgin Mary. Mayor Rudy Giuliani threatened to close the city-funded institution because this artwork offended religious spectators.


 

Figure 3. Chris Ofili, The Holy Virgin Mary, 1996, acrylic, oil, polyester resin, paper collage, glitter, map pins, elephant dung on canvas, 96 x 72in. (243.8 x 182.8) MoMA, New York.  

Firstly, it depicted a figure of a black Madonna collaged with images of the female reproductive system. Secondly, the work includes the elephant’s dung, which became the trademark motif for Ofili.  In the painting, as Becker suggests, he uses a “stereotypical parody-like African mouth” and outsized facial elements to call attention to racial stereotypes and the supposed whiteness of biblical figures in Western models. By using all these references, Ofili’s artwork  represents a deep meaning that the viewer must remember before judging his work. 

Despite all the criticism, The Holy Virgin Mary won one of the highest honours awarded to British artists – The Turner Prize. It made him the first black artist winner in 1998. His works remain important in his expression of the black British experience as they challenge real and symbolic violence and anti-racism. 

 Bibliography 

Sokari Douglas Camp (b. 1958)

 Sokari Douglas Camp was born in 1958 in Buguma, Nigeria, a large Kalabari town in the Niger Delta. She transferred to England at a young age to study in school, but she would always come back to Nigeria to visit her family and participate in the traditional activities of Kalabari life.She graduated from the Central School of Art and Design in 1983, gaining her master’s degree at the Royal College of Art in 1986. 

Sokari’s works vary in size from 30cm to 5 meters and more depending on the project. She is interested in movement, clothing, Kalabari culture, theatre and the environment. She has portrayed Britain and Nigeria in National exhibitions and has had over 40 solo exhibits worldwide in places like the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institute 1988-1989, and the Museum of Mankind, London 1994-1995. 

Her public artworks include Battle Bus (2006). It is a giant steel sculpture and living memorial that marks the execution of Nigerian writer and environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa (1941-1995). 

Figure 1. Sokari Douglas Camp: Battle Bus (2006). Photograph by Martin LeSanto-Smith. Courtesy of the artist and Platform. 

Saro-Wiwa conducted a powerful non-violent campaign against the oil industry’s environmental exploitation of the Niger Delta. Unfortunately, the campaign was ended by the Nigerian military government. Saro-Wiwa and eight other activists were arrested and later executed in 1995 for allegedly masterminding the murder of four Ogoni chiefs. To mark the 10th anniversary of Saro-Wiwa’s execution, a competition was launched by the United Kingdom-based art, activism, and research organization Platform, collaborating with Amnesty International, the Arts Council, and Greenpeace to create a memorial. The Battle Bus is a life-size replica of a Nigerian bus made of steel and loaded with oil barrels which honoured the names of the nine activists. The artwork was officially completed in 2006 and exhibited in front of The Guardian’s London offices to travel to Bristol, Hull, Liverpool and Birmingham areas selected due to their historical links to the slave trade. Later, in 2015 to mark the 20th anniversary of the brutal execution, Nigerian environmental organizations tried to bring the memorial to Nigeria. Unfortunately, as Battle Bus arrived in Lagos, Nigeria, its customs officers took it due to its political message. They have kept Battle Bus to themselves for the past five years. The artwork is coated with cold-sprayed copper and gold. Camp chose to represent the bus due to its symbolic connection between Nigeria and Britain and as an educational tool that could provide space for lectures and activities, transforming the sculpture into a “living memorial.” 

 Sokari’s visibility in the British art scene grew as her profile increased. In 2003 she was shortlisted for the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, and in 2015 Sokari was appointed a CBE – Commander of the Order of the British Empire. 

Bunmi Agusto (b. 1999) 

Bunmi Agusto was born in 1999 in Lagos, Nigeria. Later in her life, at the age of sixteen, she moved to London. She completed her Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Art in 2020, graduated from Central Saint Martins with First Class Honours, and was awarded the Cass Art Prize twice. Later in 2022, she finished her Master’s Degree in the History of Art & Archaeology at SOAS University. This journey helped her to focus on West African spirituality in modern fiction storytelling. Currently, Agusto is a Master of Art candidate at the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford, where she has been awarded the Clarendon Scholarship. 

Bunmi Agusto uses a surrealist movement in her artworks and calls it Escape to Within.  Surrealism is the art movement which occurred at the beginning of the 1900s when the famous neurologist Sigmund Freud explored the relationship between dreams and reality. Many artists were inspired by his ideas and began to create dreamlike artworks. Agusto took the idea of surrealism further. Her idea of Escape to Within explores our world and how its psychological and cultural theories contribute to creating selfhood. The living creatures she paints in her works look like dreamlike mutations based on the artist’s imagination. She often uses humans, family members and friends in Escape to Within as subjects that entered the world after meeting the artist in her waking life.  Agusto mentions stories such as Amos Tutuola’s The Palm-Wine Drinkard, Lewis Carroll’s Alice In Wonderland and the Marvel Cinematic Universe as major influences.  

Bunmi mostly works with pastel pencils and mixed media on paper. In one of her works, The Blinded, she presents a portrait of a young lady inspired by the Edo people and her fiction that she calls the Aruaro clan.  Edo people come from southern Nigeria. For them, the word “Aruaro” means “blind.” The artist drew the eyes inside the cheeks to show that they are closed through their teenage years and only open when they meet their ancestors in their dreams, highlighting the idea of political awakening.  

 

Figure 1. Bunmi Agusto, The Blinded, 2020, pastel pencils, ink and acrylic on Ampersand board 10 x 8 inches.  

Another work, Tell Me Your Biography is particularly emotional. The artist again portrayed a young female in a fictional background. At first glance, this work looks like a cartoon with a part of a human face. As we look longer, we notice that the part with the human face is sad and trapped inside the cartoon image. This part shows how the woman hides her true self from the world behind the cartoon, where she looks calm. Also, looking down, we can notice the ribs that trap the woman’s figure like a cage, so she cannot show her true self. Even though fictions inspire the work and show woman, all genders can relate to it, as sometimes we hide who we truly are.  

Figure 2. . Bunmi Agusto, Tell Me Your Biography, 2018, pastel pencils on pastel card & ink on paper 35.4 x 25.6 inches. 

Bunmi Agusto had solo exhibitions at TAFETA, London (2022) and DADA Gallery (2021). Also, she is a member of Select group exhibitions including, ASSEMBLE, V.O Curations Mayfair, London (2022); 1-54 x Christie’s, London (2021); Now, Now, TAFETA. 

Bibliography 

Aisha Seriki (DOB Not given) 

 Aisha Seriki is a Nigerian, London-based creative artist specialising in portrait/fashion photography. When she was eight, her family emigrated to the United Kingdom. One factor that influences her work is her experience at The Home Office. When she and her family came to the United Kingdom, her father’s identity was denied by the police system, which shaped her view of the world as a child. Despite these awful events that happened to her and her family, her father’s positive vision of the world and his passion for photography documentation, such as family events, inspired her to follow his steps. Her love for photography comes from her father’s obsession with photo documentation, such as family events. Her work is inspired by imagination and experience, which addresses blackness, gender, migration, class, and other topics.  

Aisha has graduated from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. Now that she finished it, she wants to be a full-time photographer.  Aisha takes massive pride in where she is from and who she is. She mainly portrays women from different African countries in her photos, as she feels they were kept away from society. Her inspiration comes from personal and historical stories. When she went to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Aisha looked at the paintings and noticed what was missing. She recalls, “The clear absence of Black people in the gallery was hard to ignore. It is important to note that this absence is all too common in most Western art institutions”. Later, it inspired her to create her famous photography series Heaven is not closed for the Night School programme encouraged by Yellowzine and The Brooklyn Brothers. The series shows the absence of Black females in museums and galleries that look similar to the paintings she saw in Uffizi. By creating the series, she is honouring and celebrating the stories of her ancestors, which inspire and inform her photography. 

 

Figure 1. Aisha Seriki, Heaven is not closed (2020). 

Bibliography 

Tayo Adekunle (b. 1997) 

Tayo Adekunle was born in Yorkshire in 1997. She is a British Nigerian Photographer based in London and Edinburgh. Adekunle graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Photography from Edinburgh College of Art in 2020.

The photographer works a lot with self-portraiture. She uses her work to study cases surrounding race, gender, sexuality, and racial and colonial history. She focuses on reworking historical stories connecting to the female body. Her inspiration comes from art historical contexts such as paintings and sculptures from the 19th century. As a result, we, as viewers, can see the historical context used nowadays and explore how the black female body was treated in the past and how it is treated presently.

Adekunle has been working in response to colonial anthropometric photography, ethnographic expositions, and world fairs. These events function as one of the numerous examples of the commodification of the black body and how it is treated in the past and the present. In these photos, colonial bodies were photographed naked in front of a plain white background or beside exotic plants to make the pictures seem genuine. These sorts of ideas were spread in Europe as pornographic postcards avoiding censorship because of the ‘primitive’ status of the subjects. She has used self-portraiture to show how past treatment of the black body still impacts black females today. It is through her own body that she has experienced this type of commodification, fetishization and sexualization. She used her body to represent the relationship between the past and present ways black figures are treated. She decided not to use other people as subjects as she did not want to use the bodies of others in the way that her source material did. Her connection to the work is also expressed through Nigerian fabric, showing her missing identity in the photos used as reference material. Using digital collage, she has blended elements of colonial photography, using postures from archival materials to display black female sexuality and status. The plants used in the images reflect those used in Prince Roland Napoleon Bonaparte’s photographic collection Boschimans et Hottentots (c.1888).(44)  

Tayo Adekunle, Artefact #01, from Reclamation of the Exposition, 2020

She has earned the SSA New Graduate Award and the Degree Show Purchase Prize, resulting in her work becoming part of The University of Edinburgh Art Collection.(45)  

Bibliography 

Sani Sani aka InxSanixTy (b. 1993) 

Sani Sani-Mohammed, (INxSANIxTY) is a contemporary Visual artist from Peckham Southeast London. He works in various mediums, such as digital art, wood and oil painting on canvas. Sani describes his work as poetry with a valuable aspect divided into three significant parts. First, to teach the audience about themselves through art, second to teach the audience about themselves and their culture and third, to push creativity and activate feelings such as being excellent and happy or bad and emotional, with topics inspired by his West African (Nigerian) heritage, London culture and social analysis.

The artist was born in London on June 3, 1993, but moved to Nigeria at the age of seven. While in Nigeria, Sani learnt about many cultures, which made him realise that he is artistically gifted. He lived there for eight years before returning to London in 2008. After his arrival, he joined the air training corps, where his love for aircraft strengthened. He attended Southwark College from 2009-2011, studying science and electronic engineering before studying for an aeronautical engineering degree at the University of Brighton. While he was at Brighton, he spent his free time drawing and creating art. By the second year of studying in Brighton, he realised he wanted to be an artist. In the summer of 2014, he returned to London. He started studying for a new degree in event management while simultaneously starting up INxSANIxTY Art on his own.   

 Apart from painting, he also does digital art so everyone can access it. He says, ” I create it specifically to balance out that idea that not everybody can buy a painting of mine.” By creating powerful works that affect adults’ emotions, he realised it is also more accessible to children. Later, he started having workshops with children and adults at Tate to teach them how to play and build their art.  

 By looking at his works, we can understand why it is accessible for both adults and children. Each piece is unique in terms of colours, subjects, materials and themes so that everyone can relate to it despite what they are experiencing at the moment.  

 

Figure 1. INxSANIxTY, 2020. 

He achieved further establishment as a force in the art world by moving into his own studio, participating in numerous solo and group exhibitions, showing his works in public art displays and festivals and working in spaces such as Tate Exchange, Church House, The Africa Center and Mall Galleries. Also, he has been presented in local and international media such as Viceland UK, BBC, The Evening Standard and The New York Times.

​​Bibliography 

Joy Labinjo (b. 1994) 

 

Joy Labinjo is a British Nigerian artist who paints large-scale figurative paintings where she often represents her culture. She was born in 1994 in England and grew up in Dagenham. Throughout her childhood, she was surrounded by multicultural black females in the United Kingdom. As a child, she witnessed many cases of racism and marginalisation. This experience helped her to develop her work in which she celebrates her culture in all forms. Also, it helped her to gain a lot of success due to her unique talent for capturing sensitive, independent and vulnerable people.  

The artist often represents people from her personal life and memory.  

Lanbinjo began her artistic journey as a child around the age of 10. She started her path by organising family photographs by labelling them and people she could recognise. 

 In 2017, she graduated from  Newcastle University. That same year, she won the Woon art prize, and then, in 2019, she had a solo exhibition at the Baltic. Her works are also displayed in Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and at Brixton station in south London. At Frieze London, three of her paintings were sold within two hours of the fair’s opening.  

Labinjo’s paintings are often made from collages that she creates digitally using images sourced from Instagram, furniture websites, catalogues and personal or local archives. Her works often highlight the figures (mostly people) she paints, making them the star of her work. Whether she is painting the image of historically significant black people in Britain, such as Olaudah Equiano, a once enslaved person who bought his freedom and became the first black person to vote in Britain. Or creating sensitive nude self-portraits to fight the oppression of black women’s bodies, Labinjo often goes for simple backgrounds. Labinjo’s use of colour-blocking is the most memorable thing about her pieces. The artist also frequently uses the juxtaposition of shades of brown and oranges for the skin tones of her figures, with little blending, which shows the materiality and painterly quality of the works. When a viewer looks upon her piece, his eyes are instantly drawn to the celebrated person in the foreground as the gaze flies across the shades and brushstrokes of that person.  

 

 

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Figure 2. Joy Labinjo, Terrfa Firma VII, 2022 © Joy Labinjo. Courtesy of Tiwani Contemporary. 

After a series of horrible events when George Floyd was killed, Bianca Williams was arrested, specific footage of the metropolitan police officer kneeling on a black suspect’s neck during the arrest, and another footage of a woman calling the police after a minor altercation with a black man in New York, the artist changed her style. Labinjo used her anger and energy to create a new series of paintings, much darker in tone, featuring police officers, protesters and business people.  

  

 Joy Labinjo, Enough is Enough, 2020, Photograph: Courtesy of Tiwani Contemporary, London & The Breeder, Athens 

The artist has been represented by Tiwani Contemporary Gallery, where she has exhibited in both the gallery’s locations in Lagos and London and at the Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden in Marrakech, the Royal Academy in London. Her art was even bought by the UK’s Government Art Collection. The desire for Contemporary African Art is still on the rise, and with artists from Africa and the Diaspora hitting new auction records every year, Labinjo is likely set to exhibit at even more prestigious places and achieve new heights in her artistic career.

​​Bibliography 

Ben Enwonwu (1917-1994) 

Painter and sculptor Odinigwe Benedict Chukwukadibia Enwonwu MBE, better known as Ben Enwonwu, was born in Onitsha, Nigeria, on 14 July 1917. Ben Enwonwu was the first artist from Africa to gain global visibility. His father was a traditional Igbo mask and religious imagery sculptor, and his mother was a thriving textile dealer. His father taught him a lot about art from a young age.

Enwonwu studied art under Kenneth C Murray at Government College, Ibadan and Government College, Umuahia, from 1939 to 1944. While still a student, his work was included in a group exhibition at Zwemmer Gallery, London, in 1937. He had his first solo exhibition in Lagos in 1944 before migrating to England on a graduate scholarship to study at Goldsmiths, London, in 1944 and later at Ruskin School of Drawing, Oxford, 1944 to 1946; and the Slade School of Fine Art, London, 1946 to 1947, pursued by postgraduate studies in anthropology in 1948. He became a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland the same year. Enwonwu also exhibited in group exhibitions with the London Group (1945-46) and a ‘modern art’ show in Paris in 1946. In 1947 he carried the first in a series of exhibitions at Berkeley Galleries, London. In 1950, he had a further series in New York, Boston, Howard University in Washington DC, and Gallery Apollinaire in Milan, squeezing his reputation as a pioneering African modernist.

He was commissioned by Queen Elizabeth II to sculpt her portrait, which was completed in London in 1957, and revealed at the Royal Society of British Artists (RBA) later the same year As the first African artist authorised by the Queen, the unveiling became a major international sensation. A version of his iconic sculpture of Anyanwu, the Igbo sun god, was given as a gift to the United Nations from Nigeria in 1966, where it is installed today. 

 

Figure 1. Ben Enwonwu and HM Elizabeth II with his sculpture of the queen. 

In 1958 he became a member of the RBA (The Royal Society of British Artists) and was awarded an MBE (Most Excellent Order of British Empire). He held a London studio while lecturing at Lagos University and serving as a cultural advisor to the Nigerian government.

His portrait of Nigerian princess Adetutu “Tutu” Ademiluyi, aka the “African Mona Lisa,” was sold for over $1.6 million (£1,205,000) at a London auction in 2018. 

Figure 2. Ben Enwonwu, Tutu (1973). The first of three Tutu paintings was stolen in 1994 and its whereabouts remain unknown. Courtesy of Bonhams London. 

His painting Christine, a portrait of an African-American woman living in Lagos in the 1970s, also reached a record sale at Sotheby’s in October 2019.18  

 

Figure 3. Ben Enwonwu, Christine, 1971, oil on canvas, 76.3 by 61cm., 30 by 24in. 

Ben Enwonwu died in Ikoyi, Lagos, Nigeria, on 5 February 1994. His work is featured in multiple public collections, including the National Gallery of Modern Art, Lagos, in Nigeria and UK collections, the Ben Uri Collection, the Government Art Collection, and the University of Birmingham.  

​​Bibliography 

Olaolu Slawn

Slawn was born in Lagos and Yoruba by tribe. He is in his twenties and has become the first Nigerian-born youngest artist to design the BRITs Award. In his own words, he “entered the art world through his paintings and brought chaos with him”. 

He worked as a shop assistant at Wafflesncream, a skate shop in Lagos, before moving to London in 2018. He then enrolled at Middlesex University to study graphic design in 2019 and began to paint during the lockdown. Slawn hosted his debut exhibition at Brick Lanes Truman Brewery in 2021, which generated a movement in the art scene. He is known for his spray-painted pop art canvases and murals. The work of the London-based Nigerian artist Slawn trades between street art and abstract expressionism while examining pertinent issues of politics, race, and identity. 

Slawn’s graffiti, squiggly-style of paint on canvas, were once free-for-all works the artist would hand out to his friends and whoever would want one – or fight for one – but now the artworks are being sold for £30,000 at a Sotheby’s auction co-curated by Skepta. The power of self-image on Instagram is what Slawn credits his success to. Working on canvases, murals and anything Slawn can get his hands on, his active street and pop art style may seem fun at first glance. This notion is supported by the artist, who has often questioned why others even follow or show interest in his art as he is just messing about. When we look closely, it’s evident that Slawn understands what he is doing, with his art diving into the themes of political challenges, racism, human psychology and other societal concepts. 

Slawn’s success seems to only grow by the day, a fact the artist can hardly come to terms with. Last October, the artist held his first solo exhibition titled “On A Darker Note” at the Efie Gallery, which also occurred to be sold out, a rarity in any artist’s career. Then, there were the Brit Awards. Slawn was nominated for the 2023 edition of the award show. He was charged with designing the figurine and the overall set, earning him the youngest and the first Nigerian-born artist to accomplish this feat. At such a young age, Slawn has already achieved what many artists work their whole life to complete. With his family-run coffee shop now open in East London named after his son Beau, Slawn is an invincible force that will continue to disrupt the streets of London. 

 

​​Bibliography 

Ofunne Azinge 

Ofunne Azinge is a Nigerian British artist based in Manchester, United Kingdom. Born in Nigeria in 1998 and moving to England at the age of 5 after being adopted, Ofunne’s creation draws from various aspects of her life, including the socio-political effects of migration, nostalgia and the complexities of her upbringing.

Ofunne’s work primarily concentrates on the history of post-colonialism in Nigeria and its consequences on black men across the diaspora and pulls focus to black “masculinities” in painting.

Her usual large-scale paintings incorporate the use of her unique image transfer method, figures painted with the lack of the colour white on her palette, instead utilising a mixture of black/blue/purple shades. Collections of symbols from various years draw the attention of a broad spectrum of audiences to experience her work. Her artworks were previously exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. 

As mentioned previously, men and patriarchal ideologies are the primary influence in her work. The artist says,” I come from a very male dominated family, I also come from a very political Nigerian family. I grew up surrounded by barristers, doctors, engineers, judges – I am the only artist. My father was a very emotional man, at the time I didn’t understand, I was always told not to cry, I also never saw a man cry. When my father passed away, I became even more sensitive to the traumas black men face and I began examining my own relationships with the men in my life, father figures, uncles, friends, ex-partners. Since then, my work has expanded, I’m constantly trying to push past male stereotypes.” 

Ofunne Azinge is one of the leading artists, household names and other new and emerging talent that celebrate contemporary art and architecture.

Figure 1. Ofunne Azinge, For the ones who came before us, 2023, image transfer, acrylic, pencil on wood, 240 x 110 x 3 cm. 

 

 

Figure 2. Ofunne Azinge, Ijeoma, 2022, acrylic and image transfer on board, 170 x 200 cm.  

​​Bibliography 

Hassan Aliyu (b. 1964) 

 

Hassan Aliyu is a British Nigerian artist. He creates large-scale collaged paintings centred on the African diaspora experience of racism and othering. His work analyses issues connected to socio-economic destabilisation and anti-blackness that are legacies of enslavement and colonialism. Hassan Aliyu was born on the 10th of May 1964 in Barnet, Hertfordshire, England. He completed his Bachelor’s Degree in fine arts at Ahmadu Bello University in 1986, specialising in painting.

His work explores issues connected to socio-economic destabilisation and anti-blackness — legacies of enslavement and colonialism. He uses a unique technique where recyclable materials are used to show the ban on importing art materials during Nigeria’s Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) in the 1980s when he was an undergraduate student at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. During his productive years, Aliyu established himself as an emerging talent on the vibrant Lagos art scene. The colourful packaging of ‘essential commodities’, a term that expressed consumer products from partnerships including Tate & Lyle, Nestlé, Cadbury’s, Lever Brothers, AG Leventis, and several colonial-era European monopoly firms, supplied the alternative mark as well as the academic and thematic context for his training in the years to come.

 

​​Bibliography 

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Dylema Amadi  

Dylema Amadi is a Nigerian-born British artist best known for her ground-breaking unapologetic spoken word poetry, for which she has garnered significant critical acclaim. She was born in Lagos, Nigeria, and resides in London, UK. 

She uses the mediums of acrylic and oil on wood to create portrait pieces that celebrate the diaspora – a society that is deeply connected to her. Her art is a presentation of her heritage, experience, and dissatisfaction that she experienced while growing up and that she continues to face. Unfortunately, Dylema suffers from PCOS, which is Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome and is thought to affect 1 in 10 women in the United Kingdom. It is related to abnormal hormone levels that can cause life-changing side effects such as painful and irregular periods, difficulty getting pregnant and increased production of insulin and testosterone. It can also affect hair growth and raise issues with the sufferer’s body image. Her connection with art helps her to go through her suffering.

Dylema’s trust for her artistry and social commentary have carried her around the globe, shaping her new creations and spreading a positive message for a shift. It has brought her to the realisation that the value in her work is an attachment to valuing herself.

Not long ago, Dylema took the art world by storm with a unique series. Bringing a shift from traditional materials such as paint, charcoal, and pencils, Dylema instead used pure (24-karat) gold to create portraits that tell stories of her African heritage. Her art has often analysed themes of identity, culture, and spirituality, as she is known for her ability to beautifully capture the soul of her subjects in her portraits. According to the artist, her gold-embellished pieces, which included a portrait of herself and those of African diasporan women, were inspired by the themes of self-discovery and acceptance. These works were created using gold-embellished oil paint and are shown in Somerset House, London.  

In addition to her being an artist, Dylema is also a writer and a performer. She is well known in the U.K. due to her word poetry at events in the U.K. and Nigeria. Dylema’s use of gold in her artwork is not just an aesthetic choice but a symbolic one. Gold was originally minded in Africa and has been employed for centuries as a symbol of wealth and status. Dylema’s use of gold challenges these traditional notions. By using gold to paint ordinary people, Dylema comments on the importance and worth of all individuals, regardless of their social standing, saying: “There is a call for African people to be seen as human, and humanity is what I am depicting in my paintings.”

 

 

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​​Bibliography 

Jadé Fadojutimi

 

 

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Jadé Fadojutimi, an artist with Nigerian roots, was born in 1993 in London, where she lives and works. She earned a Bachelor’s degree from The Slade School of Fine Art, London, in 2015 and a Master’s degree from the Royal College of Art, London, in 2017. Jadé Fadojutimi is a composer of colour, space and environments. Emotions and pigments are equally in change in her work, and together they convey a more profound sense of self through vivid brush strokes and numerous colours. The sensation of irregular feelings is represented in her energetic brushstrokes, where the colours demonstrate a search for self-knowledge. 

Fadojutimi refers to her paintings, often massive in scale, as “emotional landscapes” in which she examines everyday experiences, memories and self-knowledge. She questions the relationship between herself and her surroundings, which is simultaneously an appeal to the eye and an act of opposition. These vibrant investigations of feelings, struggles and perspectives on canvas remain unclear, similar to her motifs that liquefy into an ocean of form.

Using key visual elements from twentieth-century painting, such as grids, layers, and disparate marks, Fadojutimi invokes a sense of continual transformation. Her pieces can offer plants, microbes, or marine landscapes that always edge toward abstraction. The artist describes these complicated arrangements as “environments” built up with oil paint layers, occasionally interrupted by oil pastel lines. Fadojutimi also incorporates elements of clothing—swatches of fabric and the shapes of stockings and bows—with fuzzy outlines to reflect the trauma of displacement.

Fadojutimi often attracts inspiration from specific objects, places and sounds. These origins of inspiration define shapes and colours and function as space for reflection. Her passion for anime, Japanese subcultures, clothing and music is seeable in her studio space in South London, which is loaded with objects and sounds that Fadojutimi reorchestrates whenever it’s time to paint again.

She had solo exhibitions, The Numbing Vibrancy of Characters in Play, at Peer, London, in 2019, and Yet, Another Pathetic Fallacy at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, in 2021 and in 2022, she had a solo exhibition at the Hepworth Wakefield, England.  Fadojutimi has also participated in a couple of significant group exhibitions and biennials, including Jahresgaben 2020 at Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn, Germany; The Stomach and the Port, Liverpool Biennial, England (2021); Mixing It Up: Painting Today at the Hayward Gallery, London (2021); and The Milk of Dreams at the 59th Biennale di Venezia (2022).

Fadojutimi is one of the most exciting young artists. Only at the age of 27, she became the youngest person in the collection of the Tate and established a new way of looking at the paintings and the world at large.

 

 

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​​Bibliography 

 Tobi Alexandra Falade

Tobi Alexandra Falade was born in Warri, Nigeria, in 1995 and moved to the United Kingdom at age. Currently, she is based in Liverpool and London.  She graduated from Fine Art: Painting at Wimbledon College of Art, University of the Arts London, in 2019.  She is a visual artist and curator who is enthusiastic about projects connecting with blackness narratives. Her artistic approaches centred around creating oil paintings that encounter African and post-colonial dialogues. Tobi is co-founder of Platform Black, which operates to highlight, support and provide a community of black creatives through talks, workshops and events. 

The artist repeatedly uses herself as a model within her artworks to examine narratives of identity and self. Her term ‘shadow self’ directs to a version of herself that she visualises has continued living on in Nigeria even after she was physically left the country of origin; she thinks of this version as her ‘Other’ and analyses this subject in her works. 

The format of her figurative oil paintings are made by collaging and using photography of Nigeria from family albums and her present-day photography to illustrate these two different worlds together and create new narratives.

Through curation, she presents narratives which explore the largeness of global identities and design encounters for audiences to enjoy, question, and be inspired by. This can be seen in her job as co-founder of Platform Black, where she uses events, exhibitions and talks to emphasise the work of black creatives.

In 2021-2022 she was Iniva/Barbican Curatorial Trainee supporting Iniva’s Research Network programme: Archipelagoes in Reverse, DRIFT – a post-national digital pavilion. She has recently curated Dancing In The Ellipsis // A Cartographer’s Black Hole at Stuart Hall Library, iniva (2022), Sun At Night, Shilpa Gupta at Barbican (2021) and Rest and Repair, Street Gallery, Platform Black x University College Hospital London (2021).

 

​​Bibliography 

​ ​     Iniva. “Tobi Alexandra Falade.” Accessed August 18, 2023, https://iniva.org/library/digital-archive/people/f/falade-tobi-alexandra/.​​

Abdulrazaq Awofeso 

 

Abdulrazaq Awofeso is a sculptor and installation artist born in 1978 in Lagos, Nigeria. Currently, he lives and works between Birmingham and Lagos. He studied at the prestigious Yaba College of Technology in Nigeria. Later, in 2003 Awofeso attended the Johannesburg Art Gallery residency programme in South Africa and had his first solo exhibition, “First Step at the Goethe Institut Gallery”  in Parkwood, Johannesburg, with following solo shows at the Johannesburg Art Gallery; Maiden Alley Gallery, Paducah, USA as well as the “Goethe on Main,” Johannesburg.

In 2012 he had a solo exhibition at Fred Gallery in London. He exhibited in some group exhibitions, such as “Field of Vision in New York,” “Challenge of the Cravat,” (a travelling Croatian government group exhibition) “Far and Wide,” in ABSA Gallery, Johannesburg “Fragile,” at the Maiden Alley Cinema Gallery, Paducah, USA, and “SPace – Currencies in African Contemporary Art,” Museum Africa, Johannesburg in 2010. In 2014, he participated in “Who Is Afraid of Figurative Sculpture”, a plein air sculptural show curated by Berenika Partum in Trebnitz, Germany.

His work involves constructivism, a method of adding to the structural form instead of removing it. His artworks are often figurative and represent ideas of bureaucracy and the rules within the political, social and economic urban sphere. Also, his work answers his local background as an African contemporary artist while highlighting the corruption of the global society.  As the artist says, “I am a very emotional person and I can easily get carried away by emotions, like every human being. Unfortunately, many people forget sometimes that they are human”. He worries that the world appears to have forgotten the essence of being human and sees people only as statistical commodities. His feelings are best represented in the work where he creates wooden sculptures of human figures. The figures have different sizes, shapes and colours, suggesting that we are all unique. He explores local and global concepts of power and the complexity of political, social and economic systems. He wishes that his artworks encourage people to rethink their beliefs about the world they live in. 

 

Awofeso’s exhibitions are kept in prestigious private and institutional collections, including Benetton Imago Mundi, Laurent Perrier, Deborah Goldman and Yemi Odusanya. His recent solo exhibitions include Out of Frame at Ikon Gallery, Birmingham (2022), and a forthcoming show at Museum Arnhem, Arnhem (2023).

​​Bibliography 

Chiizii 

Chiizii was born in London to a Nigerian Igbo family and raised in New York.

Her work is not confined to painting, collage and textile design, which centres on the particularities of Igbo, Nigerian and African experiences and histories.  

 

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Chiizii’s research strives to show the significance of art in communicating and maintaining Igbo food culture and the benefit of making art as a learning method and offering art as a teaching method.8 The research tool is called Nni Bu Ogwu, and was created in partnership with Yinka Shonibare Foundation, Guest Projects Digital, University of the Arts London, The Research Centre for Transnational Art, Identity and Nation (TrAIN) and its Director, Professor Paul Goodwin.⁠ The project was supported by the Genesis Foundation⁠.⁠

Her hyper-saturated works capture everyone’s attention no matter what surface it appears upon. Neither clothes, canvases, nor prints resist the artful arrangement of pattern and imagery, carefully sewn together to give the right spontaneity.  

 After returning to her birthplace in 2014, she studied for a Fashion Textiles Print BA at the London College of Fashion, followed by a Master’s degree in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art in 2019.

One of her most successful works is a large-scale paper collage focusing on the Ogoni people in South-Eastern Nigeria. It explores the events of 1995, where a group of activists (Ken Saro-Wiwa, Saturday Dobee, Nordu Eawo, Daniel Gbooko, Paul Levera, Felix Nuate, Baribor, Barinem Kiobel, and John Kpuine) known collectively as the Nigerian government killed the Ogoni Nine after opposing the exploitation and degradation of their land by British oil companies. Chiizii’s work Ogoni Past (2020) honours this event with photos of the activists protesting oil drilling. Portrayals of water fetching, boating and a water ban notice emphasize the breakdown of the healthy connection the Ogoni people once had to water. The flag of Ogoniland and a layered scene display the lush vegetation and rainforests native to their motherland, which have all been subject to exploitation. In this work, she imagines what peace and land repair could look like to the Ogoni people. The collage portrays fresh water, boats filled with palm fruit, coconuts and palm trees. “The Fresh Air” package suggests cleaner air, with images of people diving and playing in celebration.

 

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The artist’s recent shows include RA Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy 2021, Collective Processes Gucci Circolo 2021, Blacklisted: An Indefinite Revolution and Christie’s 2020. 

​​Bibliography 

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