Okiki Akinfe

Born 1999, UK

Lives and works in London, UK

Okiki Akinfe is a London-based painter. She completed her MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art in 2023 and her BA in Painting at the Slade School of Fine Art in 2022. Her practice centres on creating an alternative to the conventional archive, encompassing ‘The Black Lens’, a subversive tool towards avoiding stereotypes by demonstrating their absurdity. Authenticity involves the othered experience, refocusing the position of the White Gaze to a Black Gaze. The figures within the paintings are visible and un-visible, investigating placing and un-placing ghostly Black figures in landscapes, within their own realities, on their own terms. A space in world-building for these figures to exist in a non-social geographical space, paused in their own time agency, resting in the perseverance of time. Highlights of recent exhibitions include ‘Free The Wind, The Spirit, and The Sun’ curated by Yinka Shonibare, Stephen Friedman Gallery, London (2023); ‘Hauntology: Ghostly Matters’ curated by Aindrea Emelife, Mariane Ibrahim, Chicago (2023). Akinfe is currently an artist in residence at Porthmeor Studios in Cornwall, UK.

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