This artist has significantly used traditional cultural elements throughout his creative process. In his recent series, “Guardians” and “Of Myth and Legend.” he investigates the iconography of Yoruba deities.
Image courtesy of MTArt Agency
Ade Okelarin, popularly known as Àsikò is a UK-based Nigerian visual artist who expresses his ideas through the medium of photography and mixed media. His work is constructed in the narrative that straddles between fantasy and reality as a response to his experiences of identity, culture and heritage.
Through the use of constructed storytelling and the application of composition, form and movement – Àsìkò’s work allows him to draw the viewer into a conceptual narrative that radiates emotions of strength, vulnerability, defiance and loneliness.
Each of his series explores the limits of femininity and masculinity, spirituality and beauty and our relationship with nature and understanding a sense of self in the world. Àsikò’s visual aesthetic comes with adornment and choreographed movement, juxtaposed with atmospheric locations, symbolism and a distinct seductive charge.
Image courtesy of MTArt Agency
The artist has always love art from an early age, but growing up in Nigeria surrounded by African art his father collected — Okelarin studied chemistry and worked in the pharmaceutical industry as a data architect. Part of this is because, “Nigerian parents who didn’t want (him) to be a starving artist,” the artist said in an interview with CNN. But in 2015, he decided to take up the challenge and focus on photography full-time.
According to Okelarin, one of his responsibilities as an artist is to spread awareness of sociopolitical concerns that impact his neighborhood and society. His art, which has addressed issues such as female genital mutilation, masculinity, mysticism, identity, and race, is said to be fueled by his experiences as a Yoruba man living in the UK and his journey through his culture and heritage.
Image courtesy of MTArt Agency
Àsìkò’s first solo show entitled ‘The Adorned Series’ was shown at Rele gallery in Nigeria in 2016. A thematic celebration of African heritage; the work explored womanhood and its intersection with culture and adornment through the use of jewellery. His second solo show at the Gallery of African Art in London 2018 entitled ‘Conversations’ explored the space of women in African patriarchy cultural structures through the lens of gender violence.
Àsikò’s work gained global recognition following his recreation of Marvel’s ‘Black Panther’ movie poster, where he used children to represent the motion picture film posters of the titular characters of 2018 theatrical Marvel release ‘Black Panther’. The project, commissioned by a prominent London talent and casting agency, addressed the need for representation and diversity in the media. The British Film Institute and The Black Cultural Archives exhibited the images. They were profiled on Britain’s Channel 4 television, CNN and on Vogue and Essence magazines. They were also celebrated and reposted online by various Hollywood actors and personalities in the entertainment industry, namely Lupita Yongo, Michael B Jordan, Common and Letitia Wright.
Àsikò’s interest in how cultures visually express themselves led him to present his work in various exhibitions and enter impressive art collections, such the Artemizia Foundation. These include the public art projects, exhibitions at the Chicago Art Fair, the NOW Gallery, the South Bank, Rele Gallery, the British Film Institute, or at the SeeMe Art Takes Armoury exhibition.
Image courtesy of CNN
In his recent exploration of the iconography of Yoruba deities, or “Òrìshàs,” according to CNN, his recent portraits and images of Òrìshàs combine traditional photography with artificial intelligence (AI), digital editing techniques and collaging, and are Okelarin’s way of drawing connections between various global mythologies, through which, he says, we are all linked in our deep-rooted stories. The premise of his work, he says, is “looking back to look forward” to know where Africans are from as a society and help carve a future “shaped not by Westernization, but a grounding of cultural ideology and aesthetics.”
In 2022, he created a globe artwork for the World Re-imagined project, a British art history education project around the transatlantic slave trade in which over 100 globes were placed across the UK.
