Nigeria Calling: The Rise and Rise of Instagram Art Sensation Slawn
With an army of fans and collectors spanning the worlds or art, fashion, music and sports, London-based Slawn is an artist gathering unstoppable momentum in the market.
W ith his distinct focus on transatlantic Black culture in and amongst urban hubs like London, Lagos or New York, Nigerian artist Olaolu Akeredolu-Ale, known as Slawn, expands the domain within which this subversive spirit operates, and comparisons can comfortably be drawn with the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Rooted at the forefront of London’s creative landscape, the artist has undertaken a vast array of projects, and his auction debut was at Sotheby's in Contemporary Curated in 2022, overseen by his friend and collaborator, Skepta.
He is the youngest and first Nigerian-born artist to design the BRIT awards, was championed by Virgil Abloh for a collaboration with Louis Vuitton and has been commissioned by the most prominent figures in creative culture globally, including A$AP Rocky, Central Cee and Wizkid.
Born in 2000, Slawn has crafted a persona which straddles a panoply of cultural media, his output spanning the realms of Fine Art, collectibles, music, design, and moving-image. Like the iconic Pop Artists, or the virally provocative graffiti-turned-fine artists whose works captivate audiences the world over, Slawn’s rise to prominence is characterised by his ability to seize the attention of a colossal fan base and maintain control over the desirability of his output through his masterful utilisation of spectacle.
Slawn has enjoyed a cult-like following from the outset. Among his most viral moments are the artist’s so called ‘fight clubs’, where his followers flock to his studio for the chance to be gifted a painting, often leading to the breakout of minor brawls. This irreverence may at first appear antithetical to the recognised conception of the artist or their audience. Yet, there is a serious case for seeing Slawn as being at the forefront of a tradition of subversiveness which stretches back to art movements as historically critical as Modernism.
“I’m not just Nigerian, I am Yoruba. This work is an expression of my identity.”
Artists like Duchamp, Haring or Banksy have famously adopted a near contemptuous nonchalance with regards to their production, and in doing so have stretched the modernist imperative of self-critical production to its limits. Slawn regularly pays homage to such artists in his work, revealing an affinity for such a polemical artistic spirit.
Whether it be spontaneous line drawing akin to the iconic works of Keith Haring, the interpolation of popular characters like Mickey Mouse by artists like Andy Warhol, KAWS and George Condo or the adoption of an unpredictably coy-yet-cunning persona à la Koons, Slawn’s proliferating oeuvre exemplifies this role as a figure at the forefront of both popular and ‘high’ culture.
Slawn’s persona embodies a synthesis of global cultural influences, and his production reifies the tradition of subversive, self-critical and comedic artwork. Artists like Slawn mark the visual culture of our age and will inevitably shape the topography of the contemporaneous art ecology.
Where his academically-trained, industry literate contemporaries are acquainted with and operate within the conventions of art history, artists like Slawn force the canon to make space for their work, leveraging their ubiquity within contemporary visual culture to enter the annals of history by sheer force and provocation.
