Nigerian-American contemporary artist Anthony Akinbola elevates the durag to an artistic medium in his vibrant tapestries that explore the relationship between Black American and African identity.
Read MoreAnthony Akinbola was born in 1991 in Columbia, Missouri to Nigerian immigrant parents. He grew up between Missouri and Nigeria.
Akinbola studied communications and media at SUNY Purchase before settling in Brooklyn, New York.
In his distinctive Camouflage series, Anthony Akinbola reclaims the durag as a readymade. These iconic garments, worn by many Black men to protect their hair, are sewn together in flag-like collages and mounted onto wooden panels. Akinbola has created a wide variety of these powerful, often colourful compositions, founded in ideas ranging from critical race theory to colour theory.
The title, Camouflage, considers both how the durags are camouflaged into the compositions as textiles, while also commenting on the use of the durag as a tool for Black men to camouflage, or assimilate, into white, Western beauty standards by smoothing out their hair. Akinbola is also interested in using the durag as a vehicle for interrogating the consumerism and fetishization around Black culture.
The series began with a forty-foot-long installation at the Queens Museum in New York in 2018 using over a thousand durags. Since then, the Camouflage tapestries have been the subject of many major exhibitions of the artist, such as Natural Beauty at Sean Kelly, New York in late 2022. Hung on the gallery walls, they become emblematic of the complicated connections between the Black community in the United States and those across the African continent, paralleling the artist's dual upbringing between West Africa and the American South.
Although Akinbola's Camouflage series has become synonymous with his practice, the artist has also exhibited more sculptural works examining these connections between American and African Black cultures.
(Untitled) Fitted 02 (2020) for example, features a New York Yankees baseball cap covered in cassava, a crop essential to many African diets, especially in Nigeria. His Divination Objects (2019) series includes hairbrushes and hair picks covered in cowrie shells, which have historically held great monetary and symbolic value across West Africa.
The artist therefore seamlessly melds totemic objects of these connected cultures and identities from both sides of the Atlantic.
Much of Akinbola's earlier work engages with the unfortunately more violent elements of his experience as a Black man, reflecting, for example, his experience with racist gun violence.
Target Practice (2015) is especially biting in its representation of American racism, with photographic portraits of his Black peers attached to an American flag, like a class photo, but with the disturbing element of targets in place of their bodies. The work is paired with audio from interviews with each of the men depicted, describing their experience as Black men living in the United States.
Anthony Akinbola's compositions can be found in prominent collections across the United States, including the Pizzuti Collection, Columbus, Ohio; the Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection; and the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York.
Anthony Akinbola has enjoyed many fellowships and residencies, including Silver Art Projects, New York (2022); Galerie Kringzinger Residency, Vienna (2021); MAD Artist Fellow, Museum of Art and Design, New York (2021); Verbeke Foundation Residency, Kemzeke, Belgium (2018); Dordtyart Crossworks Residency, Dordrecht, Netherlands (2018); and Anderson Ranch Art Center Residency, Snowmass, Colorado (2017).
Anthony Akinbola has been the subject of both solo and group exhibitions.
Solo exhibitions include: Natural Beauty, Sean Kelly, New York (2022); by Fire by Force, FALSE FLAG, New York (2021); Magic City, John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, Wisconsin (2021); Local Import, Museum of Art and Design, New York (2020); and CAMOUFLAGE, Queens Museum, New York (2018).
Group exhibitions include: Faking the Real, Kunsthaus Graz, Austria (2022); The New Blend, Hauser & Wirth, New York (2022); Convergent Evolutions, Pace Gallery, New York (2022); Idealistic, University Art Museum, Albany (2021); UNBOUND, Zuckerman Museum of Art, Atlanta (2021); Styles of Resistance, MoCADA Museum, New York (2019).
Anthony Akinbola's Instagram can be found here.
Articles on Anthony Akinbola have been published in various publications, including Office Magazine, VICE, and Cultured Mag.
Rachel Kubrick | Ocula | 2023
