Boluwatife Oyediran

Presentation

Boluwatife Oyediran - Higher Goals (After Hammons), 2024 BOLUWATIFE OYEDIRAN, born in 1997 in Nigeria, currently lives and works in Rhode Island, USA. After participating in the Noldor residency in Accra, Ghana, in 2021-2022, Boluwatife Oyediran continued his artistic journey at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he recently earned a Master of Fine Arts. As a contemporary figurative painter, his practice focuses on a deep exploration of Black identity, which he reimagines and repositions within the frameworks of history, religion, and Western art. Oyediran's early works featured cotton as a central symbol in his reflections. These pieces invited viewers to consider systemic historical oppressions, particularly by questioning the links between the history of fashion, the history of cotton, and how these narratives are connected to Black people. Continuing along these lines, he developed the concept of “Inverted Blackness.” In these negative portraits, the skin of his subjects—individuals who have emigrated from Africa to the United States—appears blue, surrounded by a luminous halo. These images embody an identity in transformation and capture the changes the body undergoes when placed in a new environment. This new series will be showcased in a second solo exhibition at the AFIKARIS gallery in the fall of 2024 under the title Inverted Blackness and will be accompanied by a publication. Boluwatife Oyediran has exhibited in Nigeria, Switzerland, France, Ghana, the United States, and Austria. He has had two solo gallery exhibitions: Point of Correction at the AFIKARIS gallery in Paris in January 2022, and For Boiz Like Me Who’ve Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf at Gallery 1957 in Accra in the summer of 2022. His work was also featured at the Krems Museum of Fine Arts in Austria as part of the exhibition The New African Portraiture. Shariat Collections, curated by Ekow Eshun.