17/09/2026
Happy Birthday, Odinakachi Okoroafor.
“I first met Okoroafor at an important exhibition in London back in 2022. The figures in his canvases caught me immediately - there’s such care, such richness in the way they’re dressed, and their emotion comes through at once: they carry themselves with pride, with quiet confidence, and yet there’s a solitude in them too, as if each gaze were telling a story of its own. Mostly women, wrapped in intricately rendered lace, set against backgrounds as considered and vivid as they are - and still, their eyes seem to drift somewhere else.
What struck me just as much was his command of silkscreen, layered into mixed technique on canvas to build compositions that feel entirely his own - pictorially rich, and carrying real depth beneath the surface.” - Mattia Masciullo, Trium Art Gallery.
Born in Enugu, Nigeria, Odinakachi Okoroafor (1987) builds a language where memory, movement and identity meet. His recurring symbol is the line - drawn both from barcodes and from the palm of the hand, which in Igbo tradition is believed to hold a person’s destiny. Bringing the two together, he sets the sacred against the technological, asking what remains of a person when identity is measured, scanned, reduced to data.
We’re proud to represent his work in Italy, and we consider him among the most compelling voices in ultra-contemporary African art today.
Happy birthday, Odinakachi - and looking ahead, we’re delighted to share that next year will bring a new project in China.
