Olasunkanmi Akomolehin Nigeria, b. 1994

Olasunkanmi Akomolehin was born in 1995 in Lagos, Nigeria, and grew up immersed in the stories, styles and social rhythms of one of Africa’s most dynamic cities. This environment shaped his formation as a painter as profoundly as any formal training, and his practice has remained rooted in the personal and the everyday ever since. Working primarily in oil and acrylic on canvas, he has developed a figurative language that treats painting not as straightforward documentation but as a form of emotional archaeology, a way of recovering what time, distance and circumstance threaten to erase.

At the centre of Akomolehin’s practice is a sustained inquiry into memory, identity and human connection. His compositions often focus on figures at rest, their gazes carrying a quiet intensity that resists sentimentality. Works such as People are Becoming Memories While Still Alive (More than a Flower Series) consider the idea that memory is not formed only after loss but is woven into the fabric of living relationships. The series A Portrait of Íbòtìlá and paintings including A Journey to the City (2023), Fiesta Day (2023) and Our1st Date (2024) demonstrate his range, from intimate portraits to scenes of communal life, all rendered with a dynamic command of pattern, colour and compositional structure.

Akomolehin frequently draws on the visual culture of his father’s generation, reimagining afros, boot-cut trousers and other fashions of an earlier Lagos as markers of a shared history that painting can hold and transmit across time. This intergenerational dialogue gives his work a layered temporal quality: the present is always accompanied by echoes of the past.

Akomolehin has participated in group exhibitions in Nigeria, the United States, Italy and China, establishing an international presence early in his career. Notable exhibitions include Visions of Home: A Journey Through Nigeria, curated by Gbenro Adeyemo for Omenai at Frame Chicago (October 2023); Out of Africa: Seminal Works of Contemporary Africa and Its Diaspora at the KuBe Art Center, Beacon, New York (July–September 2024); and Gegen den Strich: Die Generation Z in der Kunst at Schloss Sacrow, Germany (2024).

A defining chapter in his development was his residency at 68projects by KORNFELD, the internationally recognised project space and artist-in-residence programme founded by KORNFELD Galerie Berlin at Fasanenstraße 68 in Berlin-Charlottenburg. The residency placed him within a community of artists from around the world and introduced him to the Berlin art scene at a formative moment in his practice. In June 2024, he was included in Berlin on My Mind, the group exhibition celebrating the 10th anniversary of the 68projects by KORNFELD residency programme, held from 21 June to 24 August 2024. KORNFELD Galerie Berlin has further presented his work at ArtHaus Basel.

Olasunkanmi Akomolehin continues to develop a body of work that is deeply personal yet broadly resonant, grounded in the conviction that painting can preserve what ordinary life tends to let slip away.