Anthony Azekwoh

Anthony Azekwoh

Nigerian painter, sculptor, and writer. Born 2000. Based in Lagos. Building the visual archive of African civilisation that the colonial record erased.

The Work

Anthony Azekwoh paints myth into existence. The phrase is his, and it is exact. His practice spans painting, sculpture, and writing, all unified by a single obsession: the construction of a visual archive for a civilisation whose record was either suppressed, destroyed, or never kept. The Western canon has thousands of paintings of European kings, Roman senators, and Greek gods. The African archive of equivalent scale is almost empty. Not because the civilisation did not exist. Because the record-keepers were colonisers, and they had no interest in preserving what they were dismantling. Azekwoh is filling that gap, one painting at a time.

The work operates on three temporal axes simultaneously. He reconstructs the past, building portraits and scenes from figures whose visual record was lost, and gives them the monumental treatment the European canon gave its own history. He documents the present, acting as witness to contemporary African life, a Lagos wedding, a brother of Odùduwà, a saint, a sinner, with the seriousness Norman Rockwell brought to American life. And he projects forward, making work that is aged, weathered, and patinated on its surface, as though a future civilisation excavated it and recognised it as proof of something magnificent. The surface is the argument. This has endured. This was always here. You just were not shown it.

The framework is Yoruba cosmology, but the reach is pan-African and global. Òrìṣàs, pre-colonial royalty, contemporary saints and sinners and witches all share the same picture plane. The vocabulary is Afrofuturist, but the technique is neoclassical: studied from Jacque-Louis David and Norman Rockwell, then translated to mythology that David and Rockwell were never asked to paint. The result reads as both ancient and unmistakably now. Each painting is a page in a canon Azekwoh is constructing. The shop at shop.anthonyazekwoh.com is the public face of that canon. The portfolio at anthonyazekwoh.com is the archive.

The practice has expanded outward without diluting. Paintings remain the spine, available as Originals on a first come, first serve basis via the Register Collector Interest flow, and as Prints in limited editions. Sculpture is a growing axis, with marble and mixed-media works rendered with the same patinated authority as the canvases. Books sit alongside the visual work. He calls himself Griot. In West African tradition, the griot is not a storyteller in the casual sense, but a civilisational function: the person whose word IS the record. Azekwoh has claimed that role.

Origin

Azekwoh started writing at thirteen. His English teacher at Whitesands School, the writer Kola Tubosun, showed him what words could do, and by secondary school he was writing constantly. Fiction, essays, anything to capture what he saw in his head.

Then in 2016, his laptop broke. There was no money to fix it. He picked up leftover pens and A4 printer paper from his parents' house and started drawing. It was not a pivot. It was survival. But somewhere in those early sketches, he found a new dialect for the same language he had been writing in since he was a child. He taught himself to draw with a mouse on Photoshop, studied the neoclassical painters Jacque-Louis David and Norman Rockwell, and fused their technique with the mythology he had grown up hearing. He has been working in that vein, refining it, ever since.

In 2021, he dropped out of Chemical Engineering at Covenant University to commit to the work full-time. He was twenty-one. He has not held a salaried job since.

Series and Mythos

Azekwoh's work organises itself into series, each functioning as a chapter in a larger body he refers to internally as The Book of Lagos, the autobiography of a city.

  • Children of the Sun. Twenty-seven portraits. Sol and Luna at the centre, twenty-five mortals named for stars and ordered by proximity to Sol. The complete set was acquired by Nigerian collector Fola Olatunji David.
  • The Wedding. A staged Lagos wedding rendered as a body of paintings and sculptures, where every character at the ceremony carries a name, a face, and a story.
  • Three Yoruba Brothers. A triptych of the sons of Odùduwà. Aláàrá. Àjẹ́rọ̀. Ọ̀ràngún. Three crowns from one root.
  • Witches of Auchi. A hardcover illustrated book and accompanying body of paintings, drawing on West African folklore concerning women who refused to be governed.
  • The Resurgence. A colour-spectrum series in development, exhibition planned.
  • The Red Man. The 2020 painting that brought Azekwoh's name into wide circulation, both in Nigeria and on early NFT markets. See The Red Man.
  • Mami Wata. A study of the West African water deity, rendered as a single monumental figure.

Each series can be encountered in two ways. As Originals, available on a first come, first serve basis via the Register Collector Interest flow. As Prints, hand-signed and numbered in limited editions. The two paths reflect a deliberate position: the original is a single artefact; the print is the means by which the work travels.

Selected Exhibitions

Six sold-out solo exhibitions to date, across four continents. The pattern across every show has been the same: the room sells out, and the work circulates afterwards across social platforms at scale. Cities have included Lagos, Abuja, London, New York, Denver, and Tokyo.

Press

Azekwoh's work has been covered across global and pan-African press, with a focus on what his practice represents for the African digital archive.

  • MoMA Magazine (2026)
  • CNN Africa
  • Vogue
  • Yahoo Finance
  • It's Nice That
  • Okay Africa
  • Culture Custodian
  • Techpoint Africa
  • Olongo Africa

Prizes and Recognition

  • Culture Vanguard Award (2026). Awarded by All Things Africa, London, for contributions to contemporary African visual culture.
  • Yemisi Shyllon Museum of Art, Pan-Atlantic University. The first digital painting acquired into the museum's permanent collection. A first in Nigerian museum history.
  • Anthony Azekwoh Prize. An annual art recognition established at Whitesands School, where Azekwoh was a student.

Collectors

Works are held in private collections across Nigeria, the United Kingdom, the United States, and West Africa. Named collectors include:

  • Fola Olatunji David. Acquired the complete set of Children of the Sun.
  • Cynthia Erivo. Academy Award nominee, Tony Award winner.
  • Tunji Balogun. CEO, Def Jam Recordings.
  • JAE5. Grammy-winning record producer.

Album Art and Commercial

Azekwoh has provided cover art and visual identity for some of the most consequential records in contemporary African music. Selected musical collaborators include Adekunle Gold, Young Jonn, Masego, Dave, BNXN, Simi, Blaqbonez, and Show Dem Camp. Repeat clients are the rule, not the exception.

Brand partnerships have placed his work in front of global audiences at scale. Selected partners include Meta, Psyonix and Epic Games (Black History Month featured artist, more than 100 million players reached), Marvel, and Zerion.

NFT History

Azekwoh has been working on-chain since 2021, across SuperRare, Foundation, and OpenSea. Lifetime NFT sales exceed $200,000. Across digital and physical platforms, the work has generated more than 100 million global impressions through partnerships, exhibitions, and on-chain drops. The position is consistent and direct: digital is not a workaround. It is the answer. Each civilisation builds its archive in the medium of its time. Manuscripts. Frescoes. Bronze. Oil. Print. Pixel.

The Rosemary Fund

The Rosemary Fund is Azekwoh's structured giving vehicle. Ten per cent of net sales are committed to grants for emerging Nigerian artists, with a focus on those working at the edge of the country's institutional infrastructure. The fund is currently on hold while operational structure is being rebuilt.

The Studio

AA Studios is the working name for the practice. Lagos is the base. The studio's public surfaces are split deliberately. anthonyazekwoh.com functions as the portfolio archive, a curated catalogue of the work to date. shop.anthonyazekwoh.com is the public face of the studio, the room where collectors encounter the work and begin a relationship with it. The shop is organised in five tiers. Four are public: painting Originals (by register, first come, first serve), Prints (limited editions), Sculpture Originals, and Sculpture Editions. A fifth tier, Studies, remains private to existing collectors.

The studio is small and deliberately so. The work is made slowly, released sparingly, and acquired by collectors who understand what they are joining.

A Note from Anthony

I grew up surrounded by stories. My English teacher, the writer Kola Tubosun, showed me what words could do. Then my laptop broke and I picked up leftover pens, and somewhere in those early sketches I found a new dialect for the same language. Years later, the work has its own gravity. People in Lagos, in Brooklyn, in London read the same myth the same morning. African mythology was never meant to live behind glass. It was always meant to travel. That is why I still make it. The next generation will grow up surrounded by mine.

Anthony Azekwoh, Lagos

Contact

For acquisitions, exhibitions, and commercial enquiries: sales@anthonyazekwoh.com.

For press, partnerships, and general correspondence: info@anthonyazekwoh.com.

To join the register of collectors: Register Collector Interest.