Adeyinka Akingbade, a Lagos-based painter, photographer, and graphic designer, joins us for a four-week residency at G.A.S. Lagos. His multidisciplinary practice spans painting, installation, research, and sculpture, and is concerned with the repurposing of materials that are often discarded or lost to reflect on migration and memory.
During the residency, Adeyinka hopes to expand Exodus, an ongoing body of work exploring migration, memory, and resilience in Nigeria. Through experimentation, he plans to develop new works that deepen the project’s conceptual and material concerns while refining his process of transforming discarded books and paper waste into artworks. Alongside his studio practice, he looks forward to engaging in studio visits and conversations with fellow residents and Lagos-based artists working with found materials and socially engaged approaches. He also hopes to connect with researchers, community organisations, and institutions documenting Nigerian migration histories, as well as networks that can support the research and material-sourcing aspects of the project.
Adeyinka's residency is generously supported by Bloom Art. To find out more about supporting G.A.S. Foundation, click here.
Disposition, 2019, 48 × 72 in | 121.9 × 182.9 cm. Image courtesy of Artsy.
What is the current focus of your creative practice?
The current focus of my creative practice is the Exodus series, which explores Nigerian migration through repurposed materials. I use discarded books and die-cut human forms to trace movement, memory, and resilience, from the Ghana Must Go era, which primarily referring to the forced mass expulsion of over one million undocumented West African migrants, predominantly Ghanaians, from Nigeria in 1983, to now. The work examines what’s lost when people leave, and the experiences they encounter at home and abroad, including xenophobia across the region.
What drew you to apply for this residency and how do you think it will inform your wider practice?
This residency will tighten my material process and push me toward a more research-led practice. Working on Exodus is giving me a stronger framework for using repurposed materials to address social themes, which I’ll carry into future projects beyond migration.
Exodus, 2019, 48 × 72 in | 121.9 × 182.9 cm. Image courtesy of Artsy.
Can you give us an insight into how you hope to use the opportunity?
I hope to use this opportunity to deepen the Exodus series through focused field research and material experimentation in Lagos. Specifically, I plan to conduct interviews with residents about migration, visit embassies and passport offices to observe the physical spaces of movement, and source discarded materials for new works. Studio visits with local artists will give me critical feedback, and I’ll share the process through an artist talk and documentation to contribute back to the residency community.
Adeyinka Akingbade
Adeyinka Akingbade is an award-winning painter, photographer, and graphic designer. He participated in the 2010 CCA Lagos residency program Independence and the Ambivalence of Promise and won first prize at the 2011 Lagos Black Heritage Festival’s Walls of Prison into Fields of Freedom competition. His experimental photography appeared in German magazine BORRIOLAH-GHA he exhibited at the 25th Annual Festival of the Arts in Chicago in 2014. Akingbade undertook a 6-week residency in Sweden in 2016 and participated in ArtX Lagos in 2019 with Bloom Art Gallery. Collaborated with Peju Alatise on Alasiri: Doors for Concealment or Revelation at the 2021 Venice Biennale Architecture Exhibition, and again on 12 Seasons of Silifat at Nike Art Gallery in 2023. In 2021 he was selected among the top portrait artists for PORTRETO: Strokes of Expression, an international virtual group show curated by Neeraji Mittra. His work is held in private collections in Nigeria and abroad.
Photo of Adeyinka Akingbade. Image courtesy of the artist.
