Joseph Obanubi Nigeria, b. 1994

Overview

Joseph Obanubi is a multimedia artist based in Lagos, Nigeria, whose work explores the relationship between identity, fantasy, technology and globalisation. He is best known for his collages which reconstruct fragments found in everyday experiences.

Obanubi considers his work to be a visual bricolage - a (re)construct of different subjects taken from their original context into a new one. His creative ideology stems from concepts of delusion, surrealism, futurism and experimentation, providing an alternative way of seeing regular things.

Joseph Obanubi participated in an artist residency with the Arthouse Foundation in 2020. His residency project, titled How close can it get?, interrogates the limits of closeness in relation to dense urban populations. Inspired by the movements of people within the city of Lagos, Obanubi imagines both real and imagined spaces. He references currencies, numbers and analytical data, overlapping different sources and modes of technological information. Combining texts, writings and inscriptions using an embossing technique, along with drawings, digital collage and stamping, he maps the city from a nuanced perspective. Obanubi points to how people’s experiences of personal space are dictated by socio-economic conditions and wealth inequalities.

Biography

Joseph Obanubi received his Bachelor’s and Masters degrees from the University of Lagos. He has a background in advertising and currently lectures in the Visual Art unit of the Creative Arts Department of the University of Lagos.

His series Techno-Heads was shortlisted as part of the finalists for the Contemporary African Photography Prize, and it won the British Council Prize for Emerging Artist. His work was exhibited at AKAA Art Fair (2019), Darmstadter Tage d. Fotografie Photography Festival, Darmstadt, Germany (2020), 1-54 Art Fair London, Marrakech, Morocco (2019 & 2020), and Vantage Point Sharjah 8 (VPS8) UAE, amongst others. He was recently announced as a finalist for the Kuenyehia Art Prize. In December 2020, his work is included in a two-person exhibition at Magnin-A in Paris.

Works