Meet Oluwole Omofemi and Bayo Akande, the artists creating a new art community

‘Since we started Piece Unique, the idea has always been to give back to the art world and especially African artists,’ shares Nigerian artist Oluwole Omofemi, who together with Bayo Akande has created an artist agency that centres its activities on guiding, capacity building, selling and future-proofing emerging artists’ careers.

‘The thing about me is I can’t see a gap and not plug it,’ adds Akande, whose entrepreneurial career coupled with his enviable private art collection positions him as a perfect business- and aesthetically minded foil to Omofemi’s creative ambitions. A successful debut London art exhibition, ‘Contact Zone’ held at Cromwell Place, is being followed up by ‘Contact Zone II’, a special project debuting at 1:54 London, featuring work by Omofemi alongside Blebo, Boris Anje and Elfreda Dali that has been created in Piece Unique’s Artist Residency in Ibadan, Nigeria.

Omofemi is best known for painting the last commissioned portrait of Queen Elizabeth II, and his successful career has included shows in New York, Paris, Barcelona and Los Angeles. However, notions of home, identity and how it informs one’s practice have never been far from view and he chose to explore them in the residency’s design.

‘One of the things that has actually made my journey more interesting is I have lived all my life in Ibadan and I get the inspiration from Ibadan. When I tell people that this is where I live, they find it difficult to believe. I remember the first time I went to London for an exhibition, the first question I was asked was, “Are you from Lagos?” and I would keep asking “Why?”’

Presenting the case for Ibadan, he adds, ‘In the 1970s and 80s, when you talk about the masters like Lamide Fakeye, or Wole Soyinka, some of the notable people out there today, they all went to the University of Ibadan. The impact of the university, you can’t underestimate that. I believed that bringing artists from outside Nigeria here, for instance, would shape them and give them a different perspective.’

For Ghanaian painter and sculptor Blebo, the Ibadan residency offered an opportunity to expand on enduring themes of his practice as a painter and sculptor, centred on sustainability, art-making processes, and architecture in a different location. ‘What brought me to this community or family is the beautiful thing we are doing here.’ Of Ibadan he adds: ‘One of the things that drew my attention was the bronze or brown roofs. It was an inspiration for me, and one of my pieces has the bronze roofing. For me, I call it bronze because it is wealth. So, for me that was the point of entry. But also, the people; since we came, we have been commuting – every morning I see new faces, new bike riders – so I decided to have an interaction with these bike riders and in the piece Eleyele to Dugbe, I depict their expressions and that emotion and the communications we have had, in about 30 heads and 30 facial expressions.

Boris Anje, the Cameroonian artist whose work has been described as being at the vanguard of the Neo-Pop Art movement, says, ‘everything started with Omofemi, because we happened to be represented by the same gallery in Barcelona. I said yes to the residency because of the way he resonates with my work and the interest he has in what I do as an artist.’

The central premise of the residency correlated with themes in Anje’s practice. ‘In much of my work, I talk about where people meet on a daily basis. I address issues of identity. I portray the way we like to see ourselves, the image we love to have. I attach so much value to humans because in our society today we have this tendency of not putting humans in the place they deserve to be. So, in my works, I want to put humans at the centre of our discussions. Being here in Ibadan has really moved me. And the piece I am making is about that bonding.’

‘I never thought I was going to be an artist,' says Elfreda Dali, who trained and worked as a fashion designer before developing her fine art practice during the pandemic. For Dali, the special project afforded her space to explore intersectional themes from her prior fashion and current fine art practice. ‘Sustainability and craftsmanship have always been at the core of my practice and repurposing waste is still a huge part of my process.’

Of her figurative art using textiles, clothing and wood, she explains, ‘the clothing we wear is part of universal and cultural language and in my works, the clothing that you see on the subjects has its own message. I put these map shapes, which mirror a topographical effect that you will see across all of my work, especially when you look at it from a distance. It’s a way of addressing my diasporic identity, being born and raised to Nigerian parents living in London, and the idea of blending those two cultures in everything.’

At the heart of the ‘Contact Zone II’ is a desire to empower creative communities, whether on the micro level of the artists at the residency or the global stage of an art fair. Omofemi, could have just as easily showed on his own, but in the special project aims ‘to create a contrast between what I do and what other artists do’.

For Akande, 1:54 London is a natural setting for his skill as a cultural conduit; he sees considered disruption as an essential element for progress in the contemporary African Art landscape. He expands, ‘How else can we move away from the orthodox, generic approach? We know the art market is very elitist. And thinking back to when I was younger, how can younger people get into art?’

Answering these questions has resulted in a limited edition of wearable artworks that will launch officially at the fair. It is yet another example of Piece Unique’s commitment to creating varied forms of engagement but with an unchanging mandate of widening vistas and opportunities.

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