OLU AMODA

“I have the opportunity to forge alliance with the materials. I hear what they speak to me. I then try to convert people to see these objects in a different light.” Olu Amoda 

Olu Amoda is an internationally celebrated Nigerian sculptor, muralist, furniture designer, and multi-media artist whose iconic work using repurposed materials and metal expresses the very best of modern African sensibility. Amoda was born in Warri in the Niger Delta in 1959 to his father, a goldsmith, with whom there seems to be evidence of some subtle interdependence of a ‘flaming’ strength drawn from the sole element of consanguinity apparent in the art of both father and son. 

Sculptor and mixed media artist, he has aided in shifting the narrative in the Nigerian art scene with his clever manipulation of discarded materials. 

Conducting excursions to old building sites in search for rusty nails, metal plates, bolts, pipes and rods, he intentionally welds them together to create ambiguous abstract installations. Ultimately, his work provides a juxtaposition between the strength of the medium and the softness of the subject matter making subtle references to the Nigeria's socio-political issues–specifically politics, race and economic distribution. 

Whilst teaching Sculpture and drawing at the school of Art, Design and Printing at Yaba College of technology, Amoda has won the Leopold Sedar Senghor top prize at the 2014 Dak’Art Biennale for his “Sunflower” series, his work has been included in many prestigious art collection including the Newark Museum and Foundation Blachere. He has exhibited around the world, including at the Skoto Gallery and the Museum of Art & Design in New York, at the Georgia Southern University in the United States, at the Didi Museum, Alliance Francaise, Goethe Institute & the Nimbus Art Centre in Nigeria, and with the touring exhibition “out of the ordinary” organized by the Victoria and Albert Museum in the United Kingdom.