(1994– )

Ken Nwadiogbu
Contemporary
Overview

Ken Nwadiogbu’s paintings are saturated. They are of black figures caught in the abstract. Foreground and background blur. The centre, or focus, never quite holds. What is light, what shadow, seep into each other. An existential unease consumes a world without any clear boundary. If blackness – the black body – is the paintings subject, it is not because Nadiogbu’s cares to recover its destroyed value. He is not a poseur or an ideologue. It is what his paintings do that matter.

The eyes of his subjects read as cut-outs from black and white photographs – as traces of the past. What surrounds them are sweeps of bright light. The contrast is startlingly unreal – surreal. What Nwadiogbu gives us is the tension we need to help us grasp just how absurd certainty is. Because nothing quite holds. Because bodies are never quite self-present. Because blackness is not a thing.

Orange, ginger, yellow, dominate the frame. Realism, as a style, retreats. If colour is demarcated, it also floods.

If colour controls everything we see, it is because it is engorged, a-throb, alive. The painter wants us to cling to form in a formless world. He wants us to see everything that prejudice – pre-judgement – obscures.

In the opening sentences of his great existential novel, Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison writes – ‘I am an invisible man…. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination – indeed, everything and anything except me.’

Optics matter. Prejudice is cultural, it becomes biological – ‘A matter of the construction of their inner eyes, those eyes with which they look through their physical eyes upon reality. Nwadiogbu understands Ellison profoundly. He knows that what is seen, the tools with which we see, are never innocent. His paintings force us to rewire sight and perception – the eye as an organ and source of knowledge.

Perception as sensation. Nwadiogbu embraces is the vitality of seeing anew, the surreal novelty of a refined insight. Race and colour, mistakenly become primary, is in fact an aberration. What is required, what is better, is what the Nobel Laureate, Toni Morrison calls a ‘disrupting darkness. In Playing in the Dark, Morrison tells us that we must ‘learn to manoeuvre ways to free up the language from its sometimes sinister, frequently lazy, almost always predictable employment of racially informed and determined chains.

This is Nwadiogbu’s goal. A London-based Nigerian, the painter understands exile. He knows the toll of prejudice. But, instead of foregrounding a pathology – a false perception – he frees up the language of painting, destroys its ‘determined chains’, and yields a new world that is strangely familiar. Amidst the generic swathe of Black Portraiture, Ken Nwadiogbu’s paintings are unique. They stand alone. They possess a refreshing richness of vision and colour.

Exhibitions

Selected Solo Exhibitions

2024
I Belong Here, Kristin Hjellegjerde gallery, Berlin, Germany

2023
Fragments of Reality, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London, UK

2022
A Different Perspective, Retro Africa Gallery, Abuja, Nigeria

2021
Journey Mercies, Bomb Factory Art Foundation, London, UK

UBUNTU, Thinkspace Projects, Los Angeles, USA

2019
CONTEMPOREALISM, BrickLane Gallery, London, UK

Selected Group Exhibitions

2025
Volta Basel Art Fair, Graham Contemporary, Basel, Switzerland

2024
Salon Exhibition, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, West Palm beach, USA

Absolut Warhol: The Other Half, Saatchi Gallery, London, UK

Hospital Rooms Exhibition, Hauser & Wirth, London, UK

Art SG, Retro Africa Gallery, Singapore, Singapore

NEW NOW: Part 2, Guts Gallery, London, UK

2023 Portrait of a Top Boy, Embankment galleries, Somerset House, London, UK

RA Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, Burlington House, London, UK

Lucid Borders, Art Exchange, University of Essex, Essex, UK

We Are Enough, 193 Gallery, Paris, France

2022
Scope Miami, Miami beach, USA, curated by Roger Niyigena Karera

Across the Pond, Espacio Gallery, London, UK

Unity, Volery Gallery, Dubai, UAE

Freedom Protesters, Thinkspace Projects, Los Angeles, USA

2021
Real Life Is Fragile, Thinkspace Projects, Los Angeles, USA

Ruth Borchard Self Portrait Collection, Coventry Cathedral, Coventry, UK

POW! WOW! The First Decade: From Hawaii To The World, Bishop Museum, Hawaii, USA

2020
Prizm International Art Fair, Miami, presented by Retro Africa Gallery

The Cookout: Kinfolk and Other Intimacies, Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art

(MoCADA), New York, USA

1-54 African Art Fair, New York, presented by Retro Africa Gallery

Art of Diversity, Yinka Sonibare CBE (RA) studio, London, UK

2019
Moniker International Art Fair, London, presented by Premier Art Solution

ArtX Lagos, presented by Artyrama Gallery, Lagos, Nigeria

LAX-LHR, Chelsea Sorting Office, London, presented by Thinkspace Project

LAX-MSY, RedTruck Gallery, Louisiana, presented by Thinkspace Project

LAX-SFO, Heron Arts, California, presented by Thinkspace Project

In The Making, Retro Africa Gallery, Abuja, Nigeria

2018
 ArtX Lagos, presented by Artyrama Gallery, Lagos, Nigeria

Moniker International Art Fair, NYC, presented by Creative Debuts

Generation Y, Retro Africa Gallery, Abuja, Nigeria

Empowerment, Creative Debuts, London, UK

2017
Artyrama Art Exhibition, Artyrama Gallery, Lagos, Nigeria

It’s Not Furniture, Omenka Gallery, Lagos, Nigeria

2016
Insanity, Omenka Gallery, Lagos, Nigeria

SELECTED COMMISSIONS, ILLUSTRATIONS, & PROJECTS

2025
Secret 7, Art Project for War Child UK to raise money for children affected by war

Ken Nwadiogbu Artist Room, Site-specific installation at Nordic Hotel, Lagos, Nigeria

2024
Absolut Warhol: The Other Half, Art commission for Absolut Vodka, UK

A Gift of Hope, Mural painting at the Hellesdon Hospital, Norwich in collaboration with Hospital

Rooms and NHS, UK

Give an X, Art project for the UK general election in collaboration with Upvote and Give an X coalition, UK

2023
Art on a Postcard, Art Project for Art on a Postcard to raise money for Hepatitis C trust

Blank Canvas Project, Fashion design for GANT in collaboration with Hypebeast, UK

Portrait of a Top Boy, Art commission for Netflix and Intermission film, UK

Unboxing Migration, Exhibition with Art Exchange, University of Essex, UK

2022
Swift Ones, Animation with Martell, France

Promise Boys, Book cover illustration for book authored by Nick Brooks and published by Macmillan, US

2021
Raising For Myanmar, Poster for Migrate Art, UK

Art on Wheels, Vehicle wrap for Flight Logistics, UK

W1 Curates X Ken Nwadiogbu, Public digital display for W1 Curates, UK

SELECTED AWARDS

2022
Logitech Scholarship Award

2019
The Future Awards Africa Prize for Art (Visual/Applied)

SELECTED RESIDENCIES

2021
Artist-in-Residence, Bomb Factory Art Foundation, London, UK

SELECTED LECTURES, PANELS, AND PRESENTATIONS

2024
Next Gen: Give an X, The Barbican Centre, London, UK (Keynote Speaker)

The Lotus Flower, Hospital Rooms Digital Art School, London, UK (Workshop)

National Arts in Health week Nigeria, Arts in Medicine, UK (Speaker)

2023
Artful Healing: Panting Workshop with Ken Nwadiogbu, Hospital Rooms, Sainsbury Centre,

London, UK (Workshop)

Unboxing Migration: Art Workshop with Ken Nwadiogbu, Art Exchange, University of Essex,

London, UK (Workshop)

2020
Artists as Drivers of Social Change (Speaker)

Basics of Contemporealism: How to Win with Art, Mbari Uno Workshops & Artland

Contemporary Limited (Speaker)

Education

2022 – 2023
MA Painting, Royal College of Art, London, UK

2012 – 2017
B.Sc Civil and Environmental Engineering, The University of Lagos, Lagos, Nigeria

Featured Artwork