Last August, aclaimed Nigerian artist Dennis Osadebe hit the news worldwide after tennis player Naomi Osaka commissioned him to create a new work for the cover of Racquet Magazine’s 17th issue.
Osaka has also acquired a few other pieces by Osadebe.
“For the cover I chose the Nigerian visual artist Dennis Osadebe. I have a few pieces of his in my house and I think he’s awesome,” Naomi Osaka told Racquet Magazine.
Since then, Naomi Osaka’s favorite artist works gained wider visibility from galleries and plastic art experts.
Osadebe’s work were subsequently featured by Louis Vuitton on the luxury brand’s Instagram page.
Now, New York residents and others who are visiting the city will have the opportunity to see his artwork, too.
Brooklyn’s Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA) is housing the exhibition The Inside Out, a participatory experience consisting of a virtual exhibition developed by the artist. Inside Out exhibition started on October 29, 2021, and runs through February 13, 2022.
“Together they explore the foundational themes of his practice such as history, innovation, heritage, and the possibilities of the future,” MoCADA Executive Director and Chief Curator Amy Andrieux told Travel Noire.
Dennis Osadebe recently had three of his paintings—priced between $10,000 and $35,000—featured and sold in the Berlin Art Week pop-up fair MISA Discoveries.
Most recently, his work was being showcased in Christopher Moller Gallery’s group booth at the online edition of the Investec Cape Town Art Fair.
In the MoCADA exhibition, the pieces from the Nigerian artist were created in response to the following questions the artist sought to answer: “Does the armor that we wear shield us from public harm or protect us in private spaces?” “Do we recognize ourselves in the performance of those identities?” “Where do we take shelter?” “ Are we strangers at home?” and “What resides in this living testimony teetering between two pandemics, structural racism and COVID-19?”
“With his characteristic use of flattened planes, minimalist geometric shapes, and bold colors, Osadebe works in what he refers to as a “NEO” visual style, one that is modern, bright, and expressive. Osadebe coined the cultural movement, ‘Neo-Africa’ as a response to deconstruct the limiting, lazy term of ‘African Art’. This encourages people to rebrand tradition in a way that reflects the transforming world,” said Andrieux.
Click here for more information about the exhibition of Dennis Osadebe.