Eniwaye Oluwaseyi – interview: Rijksakademie Open Studios

Eniwaye Oluwaseyi paints figures, including himself, friends and members of his family, within compositions that explore the transience of identity

There is a dreaminess in Oluwaseyi’s paintings, with the people he depicts existing between dimensions, one of which could be the everyday world, the other a more psychological realm. His paintings at the Rijksakademie, for instance, often feature pictures within the picture, establishing split realities within a single image, with some passages almost dissolving into abstraction. In this way, Oluwaseyi finds a correspondence between the mythic nature of image-making and the transience of existence. As he explains in this interview: “Everyone at this point is right in-between, whether socially or politically, because we are looking at the past and hoping for a better future.”

Eniwaye Oluwaseyi, installation view, Rijksakademie Open Studios, Amsterdam. Photo: Martin Kennedy.

Eniwaye Oluwaseyi, installation view, Rijksakademie Open Studios, Amsterdam. Photo: Martin Kennedy.

Interviews by TOM DENMAN
Filmed and edited by MARTIN KENNEDY