The African art landscape has witnessed the rise of established Nigerian artists like Ben Enwonwu, Reuben Ugbine, Peju Alatise, Yinka Shonibare, Toyin Ojih Odutola, and Njideka Akunyili Crosby, amongst others. This generation of artists, at different stages of their artistic careers, interrogated the daily living of the country through varied forms of visual representation. These artists, spread across many generations have inspired a new generation of contemporary artists and revealed a disruptiveness and sense of wonder that is embedded in the country’s physical structures, spatial sites, and historical figures.
With different interpretations of personal and shared experiences as artists of Nigerian heritage, these emerging artists are restless and relentless in their exploration of issues relating to social, cultural, economic and political identity while reviewing the ideas of gender, sexuality, race, nationality and heritage. The Nigerian art scene continues to remain globally recognised as the works of these artists are pulling numbers in the art market.
Dominating the art scene in the last five years, here are 8 emerging artists you should know, look out for and support.
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Sola Olulode
Sola Olulode (b. 1996) is a British Nigerian artist who creates figurative works that explore notions of race, history, being, and belonging. She is earnest in her tender visions and delicate portrayals of joy in queer love. Olulode's use of gestural brushwork, indigo dye, wax, oil bar, and impasto, with a warm palette of deep-toned blues, yellows and greens is influenced by Yoruba adire textiles. Her paintings illustrate stories that centre the representation and visibility of Black Queer lived experiences.
Sola Olulode, Park Date, 2023. Courtesy of Ed Cross Art.
In a conversation with Liv Little in Polyester, Olulode says about her work, “I’m more drawn to and focused on happier narratives. The work for me is like therapy – I’m painting things I’d like to see in the world, things I’m thinking through, things I want to experience... I want to have narratives of queer people, just solely experiencing the good parts of love. Obviously, relationships are messy and horrible sometimes, but I just wanted to focus on this beginning phase of a couple getting to know each other.”
Courtesy of Avant Arte.
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Laju Sholola
Based in Lagos, Nigeria, Laju Sholola seeks to highlight the centrality of emotions to the human experience. Her work is inspired by personal experiences as she captures intimate and unseen moments in her portraits. Sholola creates variations of fluid brown tones on her subjects' skins using organic materials such as tea leaf extracts, ink, and charcoal.
Laju Sholola, Portrait 20 (Diptych), 2023, Tea, ink, graphite and charcoal on hand-made paper, 38 × 23 cm. Courtesy of Kanbi Projects.
Intentional in her interrogation of the interior landscapes of the human mind, she leaves the contemplations of her work open-ended and up to the viewer. She creates a sense of stillness in her works in her experimentations with muted colours, subtle lines, and negative space, inviting the viewer to reflect on the emotions portrayed.
In her art, Sholola calls attention to the essence of her subjects through the technique of mark-making.
"I view each mark as a unique story of impression, a way of creating a textured ground that reflects emotions from different life incidences that make up our identities,” she says.
Portrait of the artist. Courtesy of the artist.
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Odinakachi Okoroafor
Mixed media artist Odinakachi Okoroafor (b. 1989, Abia, Nigeria) lives and works in Enugu, Nigeria. Okoroafor’s practice stems from his need to recreate memories from his childhood. He seeks express his perceptions of community as a point of departure in his work. As he highlights the cultural diversity in Nigeria in his work, Okoroafor identifies the ways tribalism and religious sentiments is a clog in the wheel of progress in his home country.
Odinakachi Okoroafor, Lush (2020), photo transfer and acrylic on canvas. Courtesy of Sothebys.
Okoroafor uses a variety of techniques, particularly printing techniques such as screen printing, linocut, and transfers, with a paintbrush to make imprints on the canvas. Barcode lines appear prominently in his compositions as clusters that comprise the figures of his featured subjects. These automated lines, like physical and symbolic scars, confront complex histories of the body as a commodity, both historically and in contemporary contexts.
Courtesy of Kanbi Projects.
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Chukwudubem Ukaigwe
Chukwudubem Ukaigwe (b. 1995) is a Nigerian-born interdisciplinary artist based in Canada. Working across a variety of mediums -specifically paintings, ceramics, sounds, sculpture, assemblage, film and performance-, Ukaigwe approaches his practice as a process of thinking through ideas. His process is interwoven with his desire to remain in the nowness of his work as he unveils his ideas, creating a narrative in his own language from the start to the (inevitable) end.
Chukwudubem Ukaigwe, Power Play 1, 2022, Photo Painting Photo Gel Transfers and Acrylic Paint on Canvas, 13 x 22 cm. Courtesy of Art X Lagos.
His use of specific mediums creates alternate and multiple realities that interact with one another in open dialogues, presenting the figure in specific and diverse scenarios and emphasising contemporary composition.
Ukaigwe says in a conversation with Toned Mag, “The job of an artist is to communicate in the most appropriate language. I feel like my approach to art-making entails being able to make a particular statement or statements in the medium or language that is most suitable. For example, particular subjects, when expressed in paintings, do not carry the same potency as when they are expressed in writing, [but] the funny thing is that it is also beautiful how these mediums overlap with each other.”
Courtesy of Salt Spring Art
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Chiderah Bosah
Self-taught artist Chiderah Bosah (b. 2000) lives and works in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. His art career began at a young age with the replication of comic books on paper with a pencil. His work has evolved to include the use of oil on canvas as a medium. Bosah's art incorporates figurative representation, simplified realism, and portraiture to depict the resilient lives of Africans in the motherland.
Chiderah Bosah, I am because you are, 2022, Oil on canvas, 127 × 152.4 cm. Courtesy of the artist.
Growing up in Port Harcourt, Bosah feels a great responsibility to share his everyday experience in his art. The singular nature of Chiderah’s style of painting is the pronounced use of calm and pale hues to consummate his peculiar niche. His portraits examine the inner dialogues of the characters portrayed.
Courtesy of Gallery 1957.
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Cherry Aribisala
Cherry Aribisala (b. 2000) is a Nigerian-born and raised artist. She currently resides in London. Her artistic practice involves painting, drawing, and various forms of printmaking. Aribisala's paintings are influenced by comic books, contemporary figuration, and illustrative brush marks inspired by graphic imagery and her love of colour. Her strong affinity for colour propels her art beyond the boundaries of reality, propelling it into realms of expressive vibrancy.
Cherry Aribisala, Before You Wake Up From Your Dream, 2023, Oil Paint, Oil Stick, Acrylic, Black Ink and Spray Paint on Canvas, 140 cm x 200 cm. Courtesy of the artist.
Cherry's artistic exploration centres on the intricate interplay of mental well-being, the yearning for escapism, the embrace of vulnerability, and the navigation of emotional landscapes.
“Evident in these meticulous creations is a narrative of my personal growth, a visual testament to my coming-of-age journey,” She says. “The distinct visual language that emerges from this fusion of mediums echoes my unwavering desire to venture into the realm of experimental artistry, unbound by the limitations of medium or form.”
Courtesy of the artist.
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Samuel Nnorom
Samuel Nnorom (b.1990) is from Abia, Nigeria. He lives in Jos-north, Nigeria. Shaped by his early childhood of sketching portraits of customers who visited his father’s shoe shop and playing with colourful scraps from his mother’s tailoring workshop, his practise combines tapestry-like sculpture and pre-loved Ankara wax fabric in a poetic way. His materials are sourced from tailors, or cast-off clothes from homes along with waste foam from furniture workshops that are wrapped and stitched into bubbles of various colours and sizes. He navigates the boundaries between textiles, painting, and sculpture in a poetic way by sewing, rolling, tying, stringing, and suspending.
Samuel Nnorom, Selective Collaboration, Used Clothing and Fabrics, 62 x 49 in, 2023. Courtesy of Mitochondria Gallery.
He is fascinated by the identity and meaning that fabrics represent, particularly the Ankara fabric, which is popular in his community and throughout West Africa.
His mission is to engage viewers in self-interrogation, critical thinking, and questioning of sociopolitical structures and the human conditions of what truth and conspiracy mean in our everyday lives wrapped in bubbles.
Courtesy of Galerie Revel
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Luke Chidiebube Agada
Luke Agada (b. 1992, Lagos) is a Nigerian artist living and working in Chicago. His practice explores themes of globalization, migration and cultural dislocation within the context of a postcolonial world, as he reflects on the African diaspora and its impact on neo-cultural evolution.
Luke Chidiebube Agada, Nativity (Death on the Landscape), 2023, Oil on canvas, 48 x 54 inches. Courtesy of the artist.
Agada paints the transitory collapse of time and space that his practise imbues from his collection of mementos. “The disembodied figures and dream-like grounds reference the present moment of transit formed where time and space in a postmodern world intersect to produce complex bodies of difference and identity, the Self and the Other, past and presence, the inside and outside, center and periphery reflecting the ambiguity of identity formation within the postcolonial framework. It covertly embodies my experience of being alive in a perennial space and time when the politics of representation is of growing importance and a subtle attempt in the avoidance of being labelled as the “Self” or the “Other”.
Courtesy of the artist.