Sim Smith now represent Kemi Onabulé (b. 1995, London, UK, lives and works in London) following her first solo show at Sim Smith.
Onabulé works across a wide range of media drawing on her rich Greek, English and Nigerian heritage to present us with a diverse awareness that spans history and the present whilst also looking to the future. She expertly voyages through landscape, exploring our relationship to the natural world and our current ecological predicament.
The work portrays places and people who seem untouched, almost otherworldly, harmonious and at one with the landscape they inhabit. Onabulé draws on the depiction of people from ancient cultures, seeing humans and souls as more symbolic rather than individualistic. She expands on the idea of the everyman, of universal, collective experience across large oil paintings, works on card and monotypes on paper.
Onabulé’s mark marking is intuitive, depicting figures in landscapes standing, or lying, in verdant forests and scorched plains amid fronds of foliage and long shadows. There are mountains and rivers, skies and wildfires. They are romantic and dangerous, mysterious yet familiar. Her works straddles longing and irony, exploring how we have lost our way with regards to our relationship to the natural world and asking questions about how we might find our way back.
About the artist
Onabulé works across a wide range of media drawing on her rich Greek, English and Nigerian heritage to present us with a diverse awareness that spans history and the present whilst also looking to the future. She expertly voyages through landscape, exploring our relationship to the natural world and our current ecological predicament. The work portrays places and people who seem untouched, almost otherworldly, harmonious and at one with the landscape they inhabit. Onabulé draws on the depiction of people from ancient cultures, seeing humans and souls as more symbolic rather than individualistic. She expands on the idea of the everyman, of universal, collective experience across large oil paintings, works on card and monotypes on paper. Onabulé’s mark marking is intuitive, depicting figures in landscapes standing, or lying, in verdant forests and scorched plains amid fronds of foliage and long shadows. There are mountains and rivers, skies and wildfires. They are romantic and dangerous, mysterious yet familiar.
Her works straddles longing and irony, exploring how we have lost our way with regards to our relationship to the natural world and asking questions about how we might find our way back.
“I am interested in the cheapening of that beauty, that’s what we are experiencing, I wanted to describe it.”
