A Room With all our Things

Abisola Gbadamosi

Ever since she was three years old, she was always up to no good - drawing on every visible surface of her house, be it walls or tables, you could tell she was there. Her turning point happened when she was around six. She walked into a toy store with her mother and fell in love with some Barbie dolls. She remembered being so hurt that they could not afford one at the time, so much so that her mother had the brilliant idea to draw them out, cut them up, and use their imaginations to escape the harsh realities of life. At that moment, she felt true euphoria. In 2008, her mother passed away and she lost everything – her heart, her drive, and her will to live. Her art teacher at the time took it upon himself to teach her how to channel those emotions through art. She later lost her dad in 2013. He was an architect who loved her unconditionally. Shortly after that, she was officially diagnosed with severe depression and anxiety with mild OCD tendencies. After her first group exhibition in London, she moved back to Nigeria and made an active decision to follow her second love, teaching. By doing so, she finally understood the quote by Pablo Picasso, "Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist when we grow up." Then it clicked. She wanted to create art that people could relate to, art that could inspire, and art that would make people feel that same euphoria she felt when she was a little girl.

Toju Clarke

Toju Clarke is a visual artist living and working in Lagos. He studied graphic design at the Yaba College of Technology. He makes graphic art and sgraffito paintings, a technique of painting that involves scratching on canvas.

His works, often large paintings of human busts, examine moods and mental states. Their power lies in how they keep us ruminating on states of mind that we otherwise may not want to ponder on. Joy, anguish, masculinity, and intensity are deftly portrayed. The focus on the human face and bust in his paintings create a hallowed space for human presence and expression.

Samuel Vittu

Samuel believes that the face is laced with diverse stories. His work constantly interrogates the exterior of the face as an entry point into larger issues in the society with the use of acrylic, oil and charcoal. He fuses portraiture with anthropomorphism, employing bulgy eyes as windows and zoom lens into the happenings, experiences, thoughts, and crisis that goes on in the mind of his subjects.

Samuel comes from a family where an uncle had studied art, and given him the basic and formidable training during his formative (artistic) years. Those years could be described as one of concerted exposition. As a trained painter and art educator, he holds a Nigerian Certificate in Education from Adeniran Ogunsanya College of Education as well as a Bachelor of Art Education in painting from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. As a practicing artist, Samuel works chiefly across painting and drawing. Working with charcoal, oil, acrylic and canvas has been his chosen media to register and visualize his inspiration, ideas and imaginations. The resulting artworks from his usually mixed-media experimentations are figuratively conceptual, suggestive, evocative and formalistic.

Samuel has participated in exhibitions such as Life In My City, Lagos zone, at the National Gallery of Art (NGA) in (2013), he was also a participating artist in the (2019) group exhibition tagged DREAM at Vivid exclusive art gallery. In (2021). He was part of the exhibiting artists at the Refrigerator poetry online exhibition, On Display, Wielding power at Landmark Gallery, (2021).

Paul Ayihawu

Paul is a Nigerian-based contemporary artist uses charcoal and acrylic to tell the story of Africa in a new light. His work focuses more on the social-cultural issues and the impact of colonialism on African cultures and values. He expressed this often with flipped portraits of black people dressed in a hybrid of western and African dresses.

He is fervent about telling the untold, unheard and silent stories of the black community. His works are in private collections in USA, South Africa and Nigeria.

Tolulope Daramola

Daramola is a self-taught contemporary artist whose work evokes deep emotions, questions of identity and Skin pigmentation via the essence of the human physical features. Being of Yoruba heritage from the western part of Nigeria (a people whose expression of feelings are etched in Ostentatious cultural lifestyles), Daramola celebrates the people's arts and their way of life. The people's way of life sometimes affirm Joy, for example, in Owanbe a form of celebration of life, achievements and other feats by wearing colourful attires, whining and dinning together as happy people.

Daramola celebrates his background by the use of carefully picked subtle colours inherent in his works. Speaking of colours, this is the ideal segue into the red hue on black skin conversation in his works, as it spells the uniqueness in the identification of a valuable sentiments. sometimes, it's about anger against white supremacist and racism. Also its a reminder that a good mental exhaustion could have history rewritten through his visual story telling.

He seeks a full-cycle of life unfolding in stages on his canvas; childhood, adulthood, and the transition of self awareness, through The striking poses and the looks of his subjects.Be it an Omg! Wow! C'est tres bien! exclaimed when people see his paintings, he is fulfilled that his works find expression, he says.