African Woman by Shogo Olalekan Uthman. 40 x 60 cm, Acrylic on canvas with mixed media
Bright, vibrant, and deeply sentimental, Shogo Olalekan Uthman’s work carries a rare kind of emotional clarity — a unique splash of individual authenticity that feels both intimate and universal. With his project ‘Walking the Ancestral Path and the Inherited Responsibility’, Uthman invites viewers into a world where colour, texture, and symbolism do more than decorate the canvas: they hold memory. They honour duty. They trace the invisible threads that bind generations together.
Rather than framing responsibility as a weight that crushes, Uthman presents it as continuity — a quiet, enduring force that keeps culture alive through everyday acts of care, labour, and resilience. With ‘Ode Aperin’, he pays tribute to African manhood through a grounded image of provision and protection: a lone figure walking into a rural landscape, gun in hand, dog beside him. The scene is not staged for heroism, but for truth. It reads as a tool of survival and inherited knowledge, while the man’s turned back makes him a collective symbol — any father, uncle, neighbour, or son moving forward with the expectations of others resting on his shoulders.
With ‘Ease Is Not a Myth’, Uthman offers an equally powerful celebration of African womanhood. A woman caught mid-motion, pot in hand, becomes a portrait of dignity and inner resolve — a reminder that the work that sustains families and communities is often the work least applauded. Here, softness is not diminished; it is elevated. Strength is not performed loudly; it is embodied. Behind her, rich patterns and layered colour feel like a living archive — a visual language of tradition, identity, and generational wisdom.
Together, these works honour men and women as guardians of legacy — carriers of culture whose daily commitments shape survival, belonging, and the future. Exhibited at Orchard Light Gallery from January 23rd to 30th, 2026, Uthman’s presentation stands as both recognition and reverence: a salute to responsibility as a shared inheritance, carried with pride, grace, and meaning.
In our exclusive Occhi Magazine interview, Shogo Olalekan Uthman speaks in depth about the personal histories behind his images, the cultural truths he protects through his practice, and the emotional purpose that fuels his evolving artistic journey.
Shogo, thanks for taking the time to speak with Occhi Magazine. When you look back to your first fine art classes in secondary school, what did you feel before you understood anything technically, and how did that early feeling shape the artist you’ve become?
Thank you so much for having me, Occhi Magazine.
When I look back to my first fine art classes in secondary school, what I remember most wasn’t technique; it was curiosity. I didn’t understand art at all in the beginning. I couldn’t tell you why we shaded in a certain direction or why composition mattered. I just knew that something about it felt different from every other subject. It felt alive.
My teacher changed everything for me. He didn’t just teach us how to draw; he made art feel like a way of seeing the world. I grew up in Nigeria, where creativity is everywhere, and in the way people tell stories. I learnt that drawing sharpens observation, painting expresses emotion, and technique builds discipline.
I began to see that every artistic process is interwoven, just like our experiences as human beings. We sketch before we paint, and we layer colors like we layer growth. That early sense of wonder shaped me. Even today, I create from that same curiosity, seeing every canvas not just as work, but as a reflection of life.
You describe your practice as rooted in identity, memory, and resilience. What was the first personal memory you ever tried to “translate” into an image, and what did it teach you about yourself?
Yes! The earliest memory I translated into an image was a quiet childhood scene, the way dusk light fell across my mother’s hands as she prepared food. That moment taught me that my art is less about appearance and more about feeling, connection, and holding onto what shapes us.
As an artist from Africa, I’ve built a visual language rooted in memory, identity, cultural narratives, and resilience. My work draws deeply from African traditions, everyday life, and communal storytelling, using oil, acrylic, digital, and mixed techniques to weave layered, narrative images that resonate emotionally and culturally.
Also, my work is deeply tied to memory because memory is survival. In my practice now, whether through portraiture or symbolic compositions, I approach each work as an act of remembering and rebuilding. I layer textures the way memory layers time. I use color not just aesthetically, but emotionally.
I discovered that my role as an artist is to preserve what might otherwise disappear, and it taught me that my personal story, rooted in Africa, is not small or isolated.
Growing up in Nigeria, what parts of your culture felt most visually present in everyday life patterns, rituals, landscapes, and family roles, and how did those details quietly train your eye?
Patterns, rituals, landscapes, and family roles are often interconnected in my artistic practice. I would say the African Yoruba culture, which I visually tried to tell the story through my artworks, particularly one of my pieces, Ease is not a myth is a quiet but powerful meditation on African womanhood.
The landscape is visually alluring, the backgrounds patchwork of patterns and colors feels almost like a visual archive of history and culture, where an African woman has an incredible role to play within the family.
The pot is a symbol of continuity, care, and survival. Fetching water, cooking, nurturing children, these roles within the family, often dismissed as routine or invisible labor, are elevated here into something monumental. More importantly, it has carefully trained my eyes to pay attention to every dot in an image as it tells a story about African culture.
Your work often holds tension: solitude and community, tradition and modernity, survival and aspiration. Where did you first encounter those tensions in your upbringing, and how do they still show up in your studio today?
I first encountered tension in the contrast between communal expectation and private imagination. As a child, I often retreated into drawing, finding solitude in sketchbooks. That early push and pull between belonging and self-definition still anchors my work.
Technically, my artwork is deliberate. I layer acrylic and mixed media to create tactile depth, allowing paint to accumulate, fracture, and re-emerge.
My paintings are often rendered with quiet intensity. They carry patterned garments, ancestral markings, or symbolic motifs that root them firmly within a communal lineage. In many works, the background vibrates with layered textures and saturated hues, suggesting memory as something dense and atmospheric rather than distant.
In my studio today, the same tensions persist. I work alone for long hours, yet my canvases are crowded with figures that seem to breathe in conversation. I research oral histories and photograph markets and family gatherings, then abstract them into symbolic compositions. For me, painting is both preservation and reinvention.
You’ve said you come from a family of professionals inclined toward arts and culture. In what ways did that environment support your creativity, and in what ways did it challenge you to define your own voice?
Creativity was never dismissed in my home; it was respected. Conversations about art, literature, music, and heritage were normal, and I was encouraged to observe closely, to think critically, and to value discipline. The environment supported me in practical ways: I had access to materials, and exposure to exhibitions. At the same time, being surrounded by accomplished, culturally aware individuals challenged me early on.
You pay close attention to detail: “Every dot in an image is important.” What do you think that devotion to detail says about your relationship with memory and the responsibility of representing African narratives accurately?
Absolutely!. My devotion to “every dot” reflects how deeply I see memory and African narratives as living archives, not just aesthetics. One of my artworks, titled “African woman” exhibited at Madeke Gallery UK, is an intentional body of work.
Color played a crucial role in conveying the layered meaning. The palette was rich and deliberate, dominated by warm browns, deep blues, golden yellows, and vibrant reds. It was more than just an adornment in many African cultures. The brown tones of the woman’s skin are rendered with a reverence that celebrates melanin as a symbol of identity and rootedness.
The grid-like arrangement of squares and rectangles, each filled with a variety of patterns and colors. Every square has the feel of a piece of memory. I believe each tiny mark carries history, emotion, and identity.
Many of your works celebrate African men and women through labour, endurance, and dignity. What do you think the world often misunderstands about African strength, and how do you try to correct that misunderstanding without turning your art into a lecture?
Too often, the world mistakes African strength for spectacle, either reducing it to suffering or romanticizing it as endless resilience. In my practice, I try to correct this gently. I paint African fathers, mothers, workers, and young dreamers not as symbols of hardship, but as complete human beings. I focus on gesture, posture, colour, and atmosphere to preserve African culture and tradition.
In my practice, I use layered textures, earthy palettes, and deliberate brushstrokes to echo labour and time. I elongate forms, soften light, and build surfaces with mixed media to suggest resilience and memory. The technique carries the message quietly so the work honors dignity without becoming a lecture.
However, I’m not interested in lecturing. I’m interested in honouring. If the paintings feel honest and dignified, they can shift perception quietly, and that quiet shift is powerful.
In works like Hardwork (fathers and sons on the farm) and Omidan (celebrating African women), what conversations were you hoping to spark inside African audiences specifically and what different conversations do you hope happen when global audiences view them?
In my practice, I use artworks like “Hardwork” and “Omidan” to hold up mirrors to who we are. With Hardwork, I wanted African audiences to reflect on fathers and sons, dignity in labor, and how masculinity can be rooted in care and responsibility, not silence. With Omidan, I’m honoring the quiet, unbreakable strength of African women. For global viewers, I hope these works challenge stereotypes and reveal the tenderness, pride, and complexity within our everyday lives across Africa.
You’ve said your art is intentionally non-political, yet it preserves cultural, historical, and traditional things that are often contested or misrepresented. How do you personally define the line between cultural preservation and political statement?
For me, cultural preservation is about care, not confrontation. I’m interested in holding memories, stories, gestures, and materials so they aren’t erased or flattened. Of course, culture exists within politics, but my intention isn’t to argue; it’s to witness. When I document traditions or reinterpret history, I’m not making a slogan. I’m asking for space to remember. If that act feels political, it’s because identity itself is often politicized. I simply try to approach it with honesty, respect, and responsibility.
Storytelling seems central to your process, creating narratives that evoke admiration, confusion, or empathy. What role does “confusion” play for you as an artist, and why might it be necessary for deeper understanding?
Confusion plays an intentional role in my artistic practice. I often build layered narratives that aren’t immediately resolved because I want viewers to linger. When meaning isn’t handed to you, you begin to question your assumptions and look inward. That moment of uncertainty creates space for empathy and reflection. For me, confusion isn’t about obscurity. It’s about slowing perception so deeper understanding can unfold naturally.
Who were the mentors, formal teachers, elders, artists, or even family members who most shaped your discipline and worldview, and what is one lesson from them you still carry into every piece?
My discipline and worldview were shaped by my early art teacher and the rhythms of my African environment. Growing up surrounded by Yoruba traditions, textiles, festivals, and oral storytelling taught me that art carries memory and responsibility. My teacher insisted on patience and respecting the process, that is, underpainting to build structure, glazing for luminous color, impasto for texture, and careful brushwork to capture detail.
From him, I carry one lesson into every piece: honor your roots, trust the process, and let culture breathe through the work.
Looking ahead, what does “success and clarity of purpose” actually mean to you? Is it global recognition, financial freedom, deeper cultural impact, or something more personal, and what kind of legacy do you want your work to leave for the next generation of African artists?
Success to me is creating art with purpose, work that sparks thought, honors African stories, and blends tradition with today’s vision. I want my artworks to inspire future artists to be fearless, embrace their roots, and leave a legacy that celebrates culture, creativity, and bold expression.
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