Category: Uncategorized

By: Chieloka Anadu Long before he made sculptures, Monkorr Raymond Mgba was a child watching festivals, masquerades, masks, and carved figures, and being fascinated by their boldness, their symbolism, and the stories they carried. Those early encounters with traditional African art and visual culture are the root of his practice today. Now a Nigerian contemporary…

By: Chieloka Anadu Some feelings resist language, and Vincentia Esinam Anthony, known as Ese, paints precisely those. A Ghanaian-born, UK-based self-taught abstract artist, she works through colours, shapes, and textures to express “feelings that words cannot always capture,” exploring emotion, identity, memory, and human experience while leaving viewers free to discover their own interpretations. Her…

By: Chieloka Anadu What does it mean to grow up as a girl in a society that already has expectations waiting for her? That question sits close to the heart of Sarah Umeh Okwufulueze’s painting. A Nigerian visual artist based in Lagos, she is also a Fine and Applied Art Education student and an art…

By: Chieloka Anadu Olayori Daniel describes himself as a maximalist, and the word fits. Known as Dan Light, he is drawn to “layers, details, symbols, and visual worlds that give the viewer something to keep discovering.” He is a visual artist, storyteller, writer, and creative strategist whose practice uses visual storytelling to explore human experience,…

By: Chieloka Anadu Running through nearly every painting by Kareem Joseph Ayomide is a streak of red fluid, set against finely detailed pencil work, and it carries a meaning he doesn’t leave to chance: struggle, pain, and sacrifice. It is his signature, and it says a good deal about how he works. A Nigerian visual…

By: Chieloka Anadu An image can seem familiar, a body, a dream, a memory, and still be slightly displaced, and that uncertain space between recognition and strangeness is where Caroline Braga likes to work. A Brazilian visual artist and researcher based in Campinas, she builds a practice at the intersection of art, technology, and contemporary…

By: Chieloka Anadu What most people call wood garbage, Abraham Adewole sees as “a material with another life.” The contemporary Nigerian artist, who describes himself as the No. 1 Wood Regeneration and Wood Garbage Artist, collects discarded wood, old furniture, and pieces nobody wants anymore, then cleans, sands, and transforms them into artworks. His practice…

By: Chieloka Anadu Tio’s art began as a way to breathe. During medical school, making art became a way to ease stress and “find a little room to breathe,” and what started as an outlet gradually grew into something more. Today, Tio is a self-taught visual artist working primarily with acrylic and thread to create…

By: Chieloka Anadu Most of the women in Maria Paris’s paintings do not exist. “They are born in my imagination and become characters with their own presence, personality and story,” she says. A French artist based in the UK, Paris focuses on portraiture, and specifically on portraits of African women, whom she paints to celebrate…

By: Chieloka Anadu Before Oluwadamilola Oni lays down a single block of colour, there is usually a feeling that something needs to be made. “There is also an intuitive need in me to create,” Oni says, and painting is how that need finds its voice, turning visual compositions into “a means of communicating with the…