Opedun Damilola

Damilola Moses Opedun is a visual artist based in Lagos, Nigeria.

He studied Art and Design at the prestigious Auchi Polytechnic in Edo state, and in 2010 he graduated with a Higher National Diploma in Painting as best graduating student.

In addition to being a studio artist, Damilola manages an NGO called The Seed of The True Vine, an Art foundation that mentors and cares for the emerging artists, underprivileged children living in slum, currently in Makoko the popular ‘floating slum’ of Lagos.

He has participated in several group exhibitions within and outside Nigeria.

He works with oil paints using circular shapes to create the internet emojis and smileys on canvas and a realistic rendering of the human form. So, the work is a hybrid of the human body and recognizable social media symbols that represent various human emotions, sometimes disfigured human forms – albeit with recognizable human features. Mostly black circular shapes, alluding to such social media symbols as emojis and smileys, somehow inveigle themselves into the entire visual conundrum as motifs.

Also, he juxtaposes contemporary and futuristic times (expressed through social media emojis) and times past (expressed through centuries-old clothing). The fusion represents varying views of the past and anticipation of what lies ahead.

The first part of his work is an investigation into the human emotion and its manifestations in our contemporary world.

While the second is an attempt to retell our collective history, symbolically laying a ‘fresh coat of paint’ on painful and negative experiences, to add color to our painful past – making it bearable when we try to reminisce.

He hopes not only to scour the human emotions in search of what drives them towards a specific direction but also to evaluate the impact of social validation on people’s lives.