Damilare Kanyinsola Statement
Statement
My practice is a visual meditation, a deeply personal and cultural exploration of identity shaped by everyday narratives that reclaim dignity, ancestral presence, and the lived realities of Lagos, a city defined by rhythm, fashion, and layered histories of resilient people, grounded in an enduring sense of spiritual depth. Growing up within its dense social and visual ecosystem, I became attuned to the quiet tensions and harmonies between tradition and modernity, individuality and community. These early impressions continue to shape the lens through which I perceive and convey my ideas, as both reflection and response: a visual language that honours lived experience while reimagining its place within broader socio-political and global narratives.
I consider myself an African Realist painter. I create portraits of Black subjects enriched with bold textures, damask patterns, and recurring animal and insect companions. These motifs are not merely decorative; they function as vessels of memory and philosophy, drawing from African cosmologies in which humans and non-humans exist within a shared spiritual continuum. They also operate as relational ecosystems shaped by co-inhabitation, ethnology, and social archives.
My work engages with movement across space and time as a layered condition, physical, cultural, and emotional—rooted in memory, displacement, and connection. I am particularly interested in the historical and contemporary exchanges between West Africa and Black diasporic communities across the Americas, Europe, and the Caribbean, where shared histories and cultural continuities persist in language, belief systems, ideology, and visual
Gardens know her color, 2026
Oil and acrylic on canvas
20 x 16 in
Damilare Jamiu Kanyinsola (b. 1994, Lagos Island, Nigeria) is a contemporary Nigerian painter whose practice is rooted in African realism. Growing up in Lagos, he was drawn to the interplay of tradition and modernity in the city’s everyday life. He apprenticed with Lagos-based artist Muyiwa Williams and earned a degree in Arabic language with a focus on African Cultural Studies from the University of Ilorin. He began his professional career in 2016, and in 2024 the NAACP acquired four of his paintings.
Damilare Jamiu Kanyinsola (b. 1994, Lagos Island, Nigeria) is a contemporary Nigerian artist whose practice is rooted in African realism, with a strong emphasis on identity, spirituality, and the lived Black experience. Raised in the culturally rich and bustling heart of Lagos Island, he discovered his passion for art at an early age and apprenticed under Lagos-based artist Muyiwa Williams. Alongside his artistic journey, Jamiu pursued academic studies, earning a degree in Arabic language with a focus on African Cultural Studies from the University of Ilorin, Nigeria, 2021. These early impressions continue to shape how Kanyinsola sees the world and expresses his ideas. His paintings both reflect and respond to the lived experiences of his subjects, situating their individual stories within broader social, political, and global contexts.
James Seward was born in El Paso, Texas in 1979. He received his B.F.A at the Savannah College of Art and Design. He has exhibited in many galleries and several museums throughout the United States; His painting My Father in The Living Room of Our 10th House was accepted into the first Boochever Portrait Competition at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. In 2021, he was the recipient of the Peter S Reed Foundation grant. In 2024 he had a solo exhibition Embrace: Cinematic Moments at the Hudson River Museum. His work has been published in the LA Times, on the cover of Newsweek Magazine, Ritz Carlton Magazine, New American Paintings, and American Art Collector. He worked for several years as an assistant painter for the internationally renowned artist Jeff Koons. James currently lives in Brooklyn, NY.
James Leroy Seward is an American painter whose practice moves fluently between the intimacy of portraiture and the charged atmosphere of staged, cinematic encounter. Trained in illustration at Savannah College of Art and Design (BFA, 1998–2002) and shaped by formative studio experience as an assistant painter at Jeff Koons Studio (2005–2013), Seward brings rigorous craft to images that feel simultaneously contemporary and timeless. 
Bria Sterling-Wilson (b. 1993) is a Baltimore-based photographer and collage artist whose work explores the Black experience through innovative and captivating compositions. A graduate of Towson University with a B.F.A. in Photography and Digital Arts, she recontextualizes found materials such as magazines, newspapers, and fabrics to create striking scenes, portraits, and interiors. Her art reflects on themes of cultural appropriation, race, police brutality, identity, stereotypes, and beauty standards imposed on women of color. By juxtaposing contrasting hair textures, facial features, body parts, and environments, her collages capture the complexity of the African diaspora while challenging oppressive histories and discriminatory imagery.
Using magazine clippings, newspaper, and fabric, I recontextualize found materials to examine how African American men and women are represented and perceived in society. My collages juxtapose individuals with contrasting hair textures, facial features, body parts, environments, and clothing, reflecting the complexity of the African diaspora. Visually, these works address cultural appropriation, race, police brutality, stereotypes, identity, and the idealized beauty standards imposed on women of color. The process of cutting and manipulating these materials gives me control over how our story is told, allowing me to express the oppressive histories tied to the Black community. For centuries, representations of people of color have been tainted by discriminatory imagery. My contemporary collages challenge these reactionary views, highlighting the resilience, beauty, struggle, and solidarity inherent in the Black experience, which I explore through my creative practice.
Bria Sterling-Wilson (b. 1993) is a Baltimore-based photographer and collage artist. In 2021, she earned her B.F.A. in Photography and Digital Arts from Towson University in Towson, Maryland. Sterling-Wilson’s work utilizes found imagery, magazines, newspapers, and fabrics to create captivating scenes, portraits, and interiors that explore the Black experience.
Devin Allen (born 1988, Baltimore, Maryland) is an award-winning, self-taught photographer and artist. He gained international acclaim in May 2015 when one of his photographs of the Baltimore Uprising was published on the cover of TIME magazine, making him the third amateur photographer to have his work featured in the publication. Since then, his work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions at the Baltimore Museum of Art, The Peale, the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African-American History & Culture in Baltimore, and the Gordon Parks Foundation in New York, among others, and is in the collections of National Museum of African American History & Culture in Washington, D.C., the Reginald F. Lewis Museum, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and The Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art in Auburn, Alabama. Allen’s photographs have also been featured in New York magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Aperture, and on a second TIME cover in 2020. His accolades include the first Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowship in 2017, an NAACP Image Award nomination for his book, A Beautiful Ghetto (Haymarket Books, September 2017), and the Gordon Parks Foundation/Steidl Book Prize in 2023.
Devin Allen, a self-taught artist from Baltimore, rose to prominence when his photograph from the Baltimore Uprising appeared on TIME magazine’s cover in May 2015, marking him as only the third amateur photographer to achieve this distinction.