Next Up: Meet 5 Contemporay Artists from Lagos

Step inside Lagos creative scene
Lagos is an extremely busy metropolis, activity permeates its streets 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The city never seems to sleep or slow down and neither do most of its residents. The following is a cross section of young creatives living and working in Lagos, some of which have found inspiration amidst the bustling city.

Meet five artists and hear in their own words what drives them to create art.

#1: Meet Adeoluwa Oluwajoba
An artist, curator and art critic. He holds a B.A in Fine and applied Arts from the Obafemi Awolowo University with a major in Painting.

"My art is created in response to my interactions with my environment, places I’ve been, people I’ve met, interacted with, and things I’ve done.”

"Speaking about my inspiration, my experiences inspire me. I draw a lot of inspiration from within."

"In the series 'Politics of shared living', I am focused on exploring the notion of shared living and the negotiated space."

"The project, informed by current personal experiences with sharing a flat with a couple of friends, considers the relationship between bodies and their dynamic negotiations of roles and positions with the lived environment."

#2: Meet Obi Chigozie
Lagos-based artist Obi Chigozie creates paintings, drawings and digital illustrations employing oil as her primary medium. Obi holds a BA in Visual Arts from the University of Lagos.

Obi incorporates colour, figures and portraits to convey ideas which often reflect on the issues she faces and matters that affect the people around her. Emotion is a big influence on Obi and when studying her work, she intends to make the viewers feel the vehemence the subject carries.

Obi compliments this focus with her portrait works by analyzing the society - the cultural narratives adopted and how it affects people in it, especially females.

#3: Meet Joseph Olabode Obanubi
Joseph Olabode Obanubi is a Lagos-based multi-media visual artist. With a background in advertising and graphic design, his works explore identity, fantasy, a mix of reality and delusion within the context of globalization.

His approach is mostly surreal and Afro-futuristic, to give new insight to ways of seeing things.

"As an artist, my goal is to give insight into ways of seeing and to blur the line between what is and what may be, as well as continued human interactions. All these are what I constantly find myself engaged with."

"I merge automobile parts with human forms to communicate an idea of metaphysics in African context—the concepts of “magic” and “altered reality” amongst others—and how this could suggest liberation for Africans in contemporary society."

#4: Meet Edozie Anedu
Born and raised in Benin City. A self-taught artist whose style focuses on the human condition, socio political ideologies and pop-culture.

Edozie Anedu employs an aggressive use of color with ill- drawn figures to express emotion, initiate conversation and catch attention.

Edozie’s childlike and sometimes aggressive strokes make room for accidents and give his paintings that unique, seemingly effortlessly haphazard appearance.

#5: Meet Philip Fagbeyiro
Philip Fagbeyiro is an illustrator and paracosmist whose images serve as a visual documentary of our post human future. His illustrations are gateways into what awaits us beyond the Anthropocene.

A traveler of both time and space, he explores these dimensions to get a glimpse of what lies beyond the verge of what is currently observable.

"Human Evolution is certain but the specifics of it are debatable. Several possible paths lay ahead of us, every one of them stranger than we could possibly imagine."

"As we navigate possible developments as a species, we also face the possibility of us becoming more vulnerable to society and the technologies we create."