Artists

Alimi Adewale is a painter and sculptor who explores urban issues and the lives of everyday people in cities. His portraits, landscapes and nudes combine elements of minimalism and abstraction to evoke the movement and intensity of the cosmopolitan environment. In 2016, Adewale participated in the Konstepidemins residency in Sweden, and in 2017 he was an artist-in-residence at Miliki in Lagos. He has held recent exhibitions at Galleri Astley Uttersberg in Sweden and Alara in Lagos.

In his Socialites series, Adewale creates mixed media canvases using pieces of aso-oke cloth to reflect on the lifestyle of Nigerian socialites and contemporary notions of glamour in the entertainment industry. Adewale has also created a new series of wooden head sculptures, exploring his interest in the anonymous human form.

Aliou Diack was born in 1987 in Sidi Bougou in the department of Mbour, 80 km south of Dakar. He fell in love with Mother Nature at a young age and spent most of his time exploring it. At ten years old, he moved to Dakar, in order to continue his studies, where he felt disoriented.

To satisfy his longing for the verdant flora and free wildlife from his village, Aliou started drawing everywhere, trying to reproduce the environment that he loved. He got enrolled at the National School of Arts and perfected his art, combining his talent with the techniques he learned. With a style of his own, he graduated with flying colors and started to exhibit at the Galerie ATISS.

Amadou Sanogo graduated from Bamako’s Institut National des Arts – where he was quickly noticed by the director and artist, Abdoulaye Konate – in 2003. Sanogo paints on textiles, unstretched, repurposed cloth sourced from his local environment and market. Addressing both social and political issues, his works explore his own life experiences through humor, alongside the history, epics and recent events of his country.

His previous shows include the 1:54 Contemporary Art Fair in London and Paris, Les Points de l’individu at Voice Gallery Marrakech, Morocco (2017), Fables at Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London (2016), Chapelle des Dames Blanches, La Rochelle, France (2015), L’homme du present at the Institut français de Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso (2014), Museos y Modernidad en Transito, at the Museo de America, Madrid, Spain (2012); and Le Trait, the Centre Culturel Français de Bamako, Mali, 2011.

Ananias Léki Dago studied photography at the School of Fine Arts in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. He emigrated to France in 2002 when the Ivorian social and political crisis was at its peak. It is during this European experience that he began to explore the African continent, questioning its multiculturalism in the urban context with his black and white language and photographic surrealistic approach. Travelling has since become an essential source of his work. Over the last decade, Dago has produced a body of work featuring 5 cities: Johannesburg, Bamako, Nairobi, Cotonou and Abidjan. Each city tells its own story, taking into account the social, cultural and political issues. In April 2017, Ananias Léki Dago entered the prestigious photo collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art with 20 photographs from the Johannesburg, Bamako, and Nairobi series.

Angela Amami Isiuwe creates her paintings in minimalist renditions using different mediums – acrylic, watercolor and oils. From an early age, her passion for the arts became clear and she pursued this passion despite pressure from her parents to become a lawyer. Isiuwe attended the Federal Polytechnic Auchi where she studied art and design and majored in painting in 1992. In 1994, she interned with renowned artist Sam Ovraiti in Lagos and has since remained a full time studio artist. As a minimalist painter, Angela succeeds in interpreting her subjects in swift, essential and concise lines and forms, creating three-dimensionality with balance and depth. Select works representing Angela’s recent and exciting experimentations with scale, colour and abstraction will be experienced for the first time at ART X this year

Anthony Nsofor obtained a Bachelor’s of Arts in Fine and Applied Arts (Painting) from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, in 1997. He has participated in exhibitions for the Nigeria British Council, the Lagos National Museum and Omenka Gallery, to name a few. Aside from visual art, he has also written newspaper articles and literary essays for books and art catalogues.

Tony’s emphasis on the study of iconographical uli symbolism, for which Nsukka University is known, still determines his artistic process today. However, he does not use uli symbols to convey their conventional meaning, but rather “scribbles and scratches” them onto the canvas as part of his own contemporary expression. His work is firmly driven by the subconscious, and often the story of the work becomes clear to him when he steps back to observe where his process has led him.

Babajide Olatunji trained as a botanist at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife. Works from his debut project, The Tribal Marks Series, have had a series of well-received exhibitions and art fair showcases between 2014 and 2016. His work is in the permanent collection of the Mott Warsh Collection, Michigan, USA and in several private collections in Lagos, London, New York, and Istanbul, amongst others.

An autodidact by nature, Boris Nzebo began his artistic career by painting signboards for hairdressers. He then decided to pursue his art full-time along an original path: the exploration of hairdressing in the urban environment – styles, impact, senses and reactions. Through those, he says, he can see social stratospheres, mindsets and cultural acceptance.

Lately, Nzebo’s work tends to be more socio-politically driven, with references to corruption, oppression and violence against the masses. His work is often exhibited in Cameroon, England, France, Switzerland, Brazil, Haiti and the USA.

Busayo Lawal is one of Nigeria’s leading contemporary artists and designers. He has exhibited extensively in major art galleries and institutions in Nigeria.

Lawal was honorably listed in the Virtual Museum of Modern Nigerian Art (VMMNA), Pan Atlantic University, Nigeria and was also listed in the Smithsonian Libraries African Art Index Project as one of Nigeria’s post-independence generation artists. His works are documented in Contemporary Nigerian Art in Lagos Private collections (2012).

Amadou Camara Gueye lives and works in the working class Dakar neighborhood of Pikine, which is very present in his paintings. Graduating from the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-arts de Dakar in 1997, Gueye has been holding national exhibitions since 1993 and international ones since 2000.

S. Sankalé said, “Amadou Camara Gueye’s artwork is a walk in those cities where you live unwillingly but where cohabit haphazardly, misery and joy, ugliness and giddiness, violence and sweetness in an unlikely kaleidoscope.” In