Why artists are important to African society – Adesola Yusuf

Over the past few years, Adesola Yusuf’s work has evolved from digital collages, to digital paintings and now incorporate a blend of digital collage and traditional painting. Arclight.jpg’s work has also evolved into a prolific aesthetic that is bold and visionary. He speaks about his work in this interview.    Tell us about your works? […]

Over the past few years, Adesola Yusuf’s work has evolved from digital collages, to digital paintings and now incorporate a blend of digital collage and traditional painting. Arclight.jpg’s work has also evolved into a prolific aesthetic that is bold and visionary. He speaks about his work in this interview. 

 

Tell us about your works?

The purpose of my work is to narrate my experiences, thoughts and my interaction with my society and how my environment affects me, it tells a tale of a Nigerian in Nigeria at a time where everything is going digital and there is abundance of information, it sheds light on the mind of a Nigerian boy raised by the internet.

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How did you begin your journey into art? 

I’m a digital artist from Lagos, Nigeria. I’ve always had an interest in art for as long as I could remember, but I came to love digital art back in 2010 because I was in love with the Naruto manga and I absolutely wanted to know how it was made, that was the first time I found out about Photoshop but my laptop at that time wasn’t big enough to run Photoshop, I found this app for phone called picsart it was in the community in this app I discovered what phone photography is and how you could use picsart to make photo manipulation, this made me interested in photo editing. It wasn’t till 2016 I got a better laptop to learn Photoshop all by myself, that was how my journey began.

Is there a connection between your process and your artworks’ message? 

I really don’t have a process. I have jumbled up ideas in my head, I set out to take pictures of my model and download images from free stock photo site like unsplash, I always work with both images I took and free stock photos then I look at all the pictures I have sometimes ranging from 100-200 images, its at this point the ideas become clear and I pick the images that fulfil this idea move them to Photoshop, where most of the processes take place.

 

What is the focus of your art? 

A message about my experiences and where its set. There are people out there having the same experiences like I do, and it’s like saying they are not alone, like the internet and social media made us realize a lot of experiences are not unique to us and a lot of people going through the same thing.

How would you describe African Art? 

African art is an art made by an African, that has any of African diverse cultural elements or identity in it. I don’t think there is a distinct explanation for what African art is. A distinct explanation would be myopic, African art just need to have ‘Africa’ alive in it, and made by any African who respects what it is to be a part of any tribe or nation of the African continent. The African culture is too diverse to be able to pin a particular description to it. I believe creating art of your experience or interaction with your society in Africa is African art. It is as important as any type of art, it serves a purpose, it tells a story, it serves as a milestone, it educates, it expresses feelings.

My work does reflect Africa, it expresses the mind of a Nigerian having a Nigerian experience while chronicling these experiences that comes with living in Lagos, Nigeria and being a Nigerian as art, that’s African enough. One of my works, Giant, from 2018 tells a tale of living in the economic giant of Nigeria Lagos the every day struggle in the city like driving in the desert in pursuit of making ends meet, getting by or making it. Sometimes the future looks bleak but you know the treasure is somewhere there in this city.

How have other artists or art genres influenced your sense of aesthetics? 

I’d say the internet as a whole helped shape what my art has come to be, as its what even provoked me to pursue this type of art, especially pinterest where I first came across collages in 2016, I was only interested in the drawing side of digital art and retouching pictures before 2016, while surfing pinterest for digital art, I found collages from Magdiel Lopez and various other artist who I don’t think had their art tagged. My artist friends have also really been a major influence. The renaissance, baroque and rococo art movement too. Rococo is one of my arts where you could see the halo is inspired by the overly ornate rococo art movement.

What roles does the artist have in African society? 

Artist have helped in maintaining and preserving the African culture. This helps document the African experience of when they were created, in the future people would know what it was to be a part of one of the several nations of Africa at this particular era. This goes for all forms of art.

Source: africandigitalart.com