Oluwafemi Afolabi.

Portfolio.

Artist Statement.

My artworks are inspired by a number that I could trace to the uniqueness and endowments of Africa as a whole. Amongst them are the following which you would usually find on every piece of my works: bats, Ankara clothing, and African bead. Bats in my artworks represent my mother. Whose roles had been duplicated into both motherly and fatherly since my childhood when my father had answered his clarion call to heaven. My mother has been the only one who had been shouldering all my responsibilities for me during rainfall and sunshine according to her capacities. And on days that seem unfavorable, she buries her head in her palms or between her thighs just as a bat also does.

Oluwafemi is an indigenous artist with traditional background blended with modern education exposure. He loves to work mostly on graphite, charcoal, paper, and acrylic on canvas art pieces, to say the least. He draws, paints, and has also got a deft skill in graphics designing. Hence, I would like to submit that my artworks envisage everything in Africa. The past, the present, the future, beliefs, norms, myths, values, taboos, traditions, culture, gods, deities, and places of worship. Ethnicity, language, power, politics and rivalry, farming and agriculture, luxury and penury, freedom and enslavement, pain and joy, life and death, love and betrayal, the wealth of our poverty, and the poverty of our wealth.

Artist Biography.

Oluwafemi Afolabi is a visual artist. He is an indigene of Ogbomoso, Oyo state, Nigeria. He was born in the early 1990s’ in the northern part of Nigeria. Oluwafemi attained his basic, elementary education and tertiary education in Oyo town, Oyo state. He is a graduate of Emmanuel Alayande College of Education Oyo, where he obtained a Nigeria Certificate in Education (NCE) in Fine and Applied Arts as a Painting and Graphics Specialist in 2017. He then proceeded to the most revered Obafemi Awolowo University Ile-Ife (ACE chapter) for his bachelor’s degree in Arts.

Oluwafemi has participated in several group exhibitions, both physical and virtual exhibitions which allow him to showcase his work to the world:

• LASGIDI art exhibition in Lagos, 2021.
• Life in my city art festival, 2021.
• Ibadan Arnheim collections Art exhibition 2022.
• Life in my city art festival, 2022.

He’s reachable via the following social media platforms:

• Facebook: Oluwafemi Afolabi.
• Instagram: oluwafemi_afolabi_
• Twitter: @oluwafemiafo
• LinkedIn: Oluwafemi Afolabi
• Email: femoartproductions@gmail.com
• Phone no.: +234 813 867 4518.