Works
THE GODS OF SAFETY – (2024 to 2025)
The Gods of Safety reimagines public safety as a living, breathing language shaped by street culture, everyday life, and shared memory. Rather than treating safety as a set of static rules, this series draws from the vibrant energy of Lagos, fusing indigenous sculptures with universal road signs to create a new visual conversation.
This body of work is inspired by the 1968 United Nations Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals, which allows signatory countries to integrate indigenous symbols while preserving the essential global character of road signage. I see this as an invitation: a chance to question what public symbols could look like if they emerged more directly from local culture, language, and identity.
In The Gods of Safety, nostalgia and humour run through the visual language. Street vernacular replaces formal wording: “Stop Your Gragra” stands in for the Stop sign; “Wahala Dey Ahead” becomes the hazard warning; “Iyana Olopa” (The Policeman’s Junction) echoes the colours associated with police presence. These signs are functional; they embody the humour, caution, and improvisational spirit of everyday Lagos life.
Historically, before the League of Nations began standardizing road signage in 1931, public signals reflected the multiculturalism and diversity of the places they served. Today, in some parts of the world, localized forms of signalization invented generations ago still survive. The Gods of Safety taps into this lineage, exploring the tension between global standards, local knowledge systems, and personal imagination.
This series challenges the audience to reimagine public symbols: what if our road signs didn’t just instruct, but reflected the gender, literacy, and cultural diversity of the people they aim to serve?
DEATH TRAPS – (2023 to 2024)
Potholes or Death Traps, as I call them, are an ongoing nightmare for motorists across Nigeria. Ever-present, they often seem like an inherent part of the road design itself. To me, they represent not just negligence but an intentional disregard for public safety, becoming deadly hazards that we have come to accept.
In response to this widespread menace, local communities have developed their innovative signalizations to alert road users to these danger zones. Made from found materials like wood, tyres, and stones, these grassroots warnings often serve as temporary solutions where proper road signs are absent. Sometimes, additional materials like red fabric or cordon tape are used to increase visibility, reflecting the resourcefulness and resilience of Nigerians when faced with inadequate infrastructure.
These makeshift signals have greatly influenced my Death Traps series and also served as inspiration for my Safety and Street Signs works. In the RED ROOM (hyperlink to Prototype catalogue) installation during my Prototype exhibition, I used these symbolic barriers to mirror the experience of bystanders witnessing road crashes.
My Death Traps sculptures are created from found wood and abandoned materials in my neighbourhood and are sculpted to mirror the local signs that inspired them. Through this series, I engage with the tension between formal safety systems and the spontaneous, street-level efforts to safeguard life in the absence of official infrastructure.
AJEBO SERIES – (2021 to 2024)
This body of work explores relational values, the qualities that shape how we connect with and care for others through the lens of meaningful relationships in my life. The series embodies graciousness, empathy, gratitude, and humility. It acts as an artistic compendium: a collection of plaques that honor those who have profoundly shaped my growth. At the heart of the series is a tribute to my father. Though I knew his love for only the first nine years of my life, his unwavering support during my early years as an artist left a lasting impact, making him the first and only individual figure represented in this body of work.
The figures are bold, sharing common spaces that symbolize how one person’s influence naturally leads to another’s. I deliberately moved away from technical precision, choosing instead playful, vibrant, and solid forms to reflect the authenticity and spirit of these relationships.
SIGNS IN THE CITYSCAPE – (2021 -2023)
This series began with a simple thought that branched out much like a mental organogram into a structured reflection on everyday visual language in Lagos. Before I knew it, I was collecting street signs, phrases, and safety warnings that were both familiar and strange: hand-painted words on walls, decals on buses, and misspelled public notices that somehow made perfect sense.
Signs in the Cityscape draws from the visual codes of Lagos, its bold text, sharp colour contrasts, and a rough aesthetic that often carries more urgency than design. These signs don’t just communicate; they instruct, warn, and sometimes preach. They blur the line between public information and personal expression. I replicate their style, but pare down the visual noise to highlight the message or the tension behind it.
My work engages the logic and rhythm of these signs: how they rely on assumed knowledge, like understanding “419” as shorthand for fraud. These visual messages are cultural shorthand, not always accessible, but loaded with meaning for those who can read between the lines.
Humour plays a role in how I approach these works, but it’s not the end goal. I am interested in how humour and familiarity create a false sense of comfort, while the subtext points to deeper issues: survival, fear, control, and the improvisational strategies people use to navigate public space in Lagos.
This series is both a tribute and a critique. It asks how we absorb authority, how language moves across class and space, and how everyday materials become unofficial archives of lived experience.
EXCLAMATION FIGURES – (2022)
The Exclamation Figures emerged early in my Safety and Street Signs series, marking a critical moment in my exploration of geometric abstraction and minimalism. These inverted exclamation marks (!) serve as the central figures of the series, presented in both circular and angular forms. They reflect my unique approach to the geometry of movement and caution.
In the initial compositions, I deconstructed the caution sign by adding legs to the upside-down exclamation marks, suggesting motion, and paired them with the caution triangle. This fusion symbolizes the connection between humans and the safety signs in our surroundings. The colours of safety symbolism remain consistent, with characters moving in ways that suggest they are cautious of their environment.
As the series evolved, I incorporated other elements from road signage systems. For instance, in my Mon Akpo paintings (see the paintings here), I use black silhouettes against a white background, encircled by a red ring, mirroring the mandatory signs of traffic regulations.
CENTRAL BANK OF DANFO – (2021)
Danfo drivers, bus conductors, and agberos have revolutionized the perception of money in Nigeria by reimagining our currencies to suit their preferences. Alongside the neologisms they have created, there has been a surge of mock currencies featuring new symbols, icons, and ideas, replacing the original portraits and designs on our banknotes. These reinvented currencies, often produced as stickers, showcase popular music celebrities, religious leaders, and other figures, and are predominantly found on Danfo, Korope, and Keke, the popular modes of transportation within Lagos State. This raises important questions: What influences these transport operators? While popular culture plays a significant role, this body of work seeks to explore how their intense consumption of culture intersects with their reimagining of money.
“Owo ni koko,” meaning “money is the ultimate” in Yoruba, reflects the community’s reverence for wealth. Yet, there is a striking irony in the neglect shown toward the vehicles and infrastructure that generate it. Danfo buses, in particular, stand as both symbols of economic vitality and sites of ongoing decay.
This series presents my version of reimagined currencies, drawing inspiration from Danfo motifs, architectural structures, and public sculptures found across the Lagos landscape. I also incorporate the slang name coined by Danfo drivers, conductors, and agberos in renaming Nigerian currency using their playful language to invite a broader reflection on our collective attitude toward the Naira.
Titled The Central Bank of Danfo, the series pays homage to Nigeria by retaining key elements of the original notes: the Naira symbol, numerical figures, color schemes, and the national coat of arms, preserving a sense of familiarity even within its playful reimagination.
CONSUMER CULTURE – (2021 to Present)
Consumer Culture is an ongoing series of paintings and installations exploring the habits, survival strategies, and identity expressions of everyday life in urban Nigeria, specifically in Lagos.
Each painting in the series features a central character, deepened through motifs and meanings expressed by line, colour, composition, and title. Painted in acrylic on canvas, the works maintain my geometric approach to figuration. The repeated central figure conveys the relentless rhythm of marketing and consumption, a cycle that never stops. Alongside the paintings are installations composed of alcoholic and herbal beverages, many packaged in small plastic bottles, arranged in wooden cabinets. Sourced from the streets of Lagos, Ibadan, and Ado-Ekiti, the bottles are displayed much as they are sold at bus parks: in tight, layered formations that invite viewers into a reflection on street culture, consumption habits, and the improvisational ways identity is performed in public spaces.
Titles such as Hungry Man Padi, Sapele Spirit, Chop Akara Dey Go, and Man Shall Not Live By Bread Alone serve not only as names but also as conceptual anchors, linking consumption to survival, resilience, and expression. Colour plays a symbolic role throughout the series, referencing popular foods and brands that dominate daily life. Many of the paintings are inspired by common street food snacks eaten on the go, in buses, under open sheds, or while waiting for public services. Even when consumed at home, these meals are often hurried, driven by the pressures of time, money, and the demands of city life.
In my opinion, Consumer Culture reflects the fast-paced character of Lagos and the adaptive spirit of its people. What we eat, how we buy, and how we move through the city reveal a simple, enduring truth: to live here is to survive.
