The Department of Painting + Printmaking presents a virtual lecture by Tunji Adeniyi-Jones.
Tunji Adeniyi-Jones is a painter whose work is heavily steeped in West African aesthetics; his imagery is a dedication and an homage – a preservation of his Yoruban heritage that also questions idolatry from a distinctly diasporic perspective. He is further invested in presenting this history and personal reflection through an idiosyncratic and contemporized context as his stylized figures and flora adornments float in suspension through preternatural or ritualistic environments, replete with repeating patterns rendered in vibrant tones. Adeniyi-Jones’ androgynous lovers, masked deities, and regal animals dance across his foliated and seasonal spaces, singing to ceremony and mythology with reverie for the natural world.
Tunji Adeniyi-Jones (b. 1992, London, England) lives and works in New York, NY. He received his BFA from Oxford University in 2014, and his MFA in Painting and Printmaking from the Yale School of Art in 2017. He had solo exhibitions with Nicelle Beauchene, New York, NY; The Cabin, Los Angeles, CA; and Hunter Harrison, London, UK. He is included in the traveling exhibition Young, Gifted, and Black: The Lumpkin-Bocuzzi Family Collection (2020-2022). His work was in recent group exhibitions at CF Hill and Loyal Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden; and at Deitch Projects, Los Angeles, CA. He was an inaugural recipient of the Black Rock Residency, Dakar, Senegal, and was named a Forbes 30 Under 30 Artist of 2020. Adeniyi-Jones’ work can be found in the public collection of the Dallas Museum of Art, TX.