Cables, Waste, and the Weight of Braiding
By Patience Adekunle
Patience Adekunle builds portraits from recycled electronic cables in Ibadan. At 28, she is making work that treats e-waste as both material and argument.
Art Blog | Mondoir
Insights, articles, and stories about contemporary art, collecting, and the art world.
Box by Box, Shade by Shade
By Olamilekan Okunade
Nigerian painter Olamilekan Okunade builds his figures from geometric blocks of color, pixel by pixel, until a tech lady in a grey suit emerges from a library of dark books.
Burnt Sienna Ground, Blue Sky Above
By Pierre Benjamin
Pierre Benjamin paints icons — Winehouse, Dean, Monroe — in oil on a warm ochre ground, chasing the private face behind the public one.
Less Rescue, More Trust
By Art Meštrović
Croatian painter Art Meštrović works from a home studio in Virovitica, scraping back oil paint until a helmet's reflection finally tells him when to stop.
The Archive That Never Empties
By Metalhead Melankolis
Jakarta collagist Metalhead Melankolis keeps a face torn from a magazine he hasn't used in years. He's still waiting for the right moment.
The Surface Must Be Ready First
By Oluwafemi Akanmu
Oluwafemi Akanmu works in charcoal and acrylic from Ibadan, coating and sanding canvas before a single mark is made. The preparation, he says, is half the work.
Finding Faces in Crumpled Paper
By MR.SOAPSKI
Polish artist MR.SOAPSKI doesn't invent his subjects — he finds them in folds of fabric and crumpled sheets, then builds portraits around what the light reveals.
The Leg Stayed In
By MasterArt
MasterArt builds portraits from recycled denim and paint in Ibadan. His newest works trace what happens when personal injury becomes pictorial structure.
The Eyes Always Speak First
By Flourish Oyinlola
Flourish Oyinlola works in oil, slowly, on faces that hold what words won't carry. His three 2026 paintings have already found an audience.
Two or Three Days, Then Leave It
By Nataliia Ivaniv
Nataliia Ivaniv paints on the floor, works fast while the acrylic is wet, then steps back and gives herself 72 hours to decide if anything needs to change.
The Colors Speak First
By Raquel Reis
Brazilian painter Raquel Reis works fast, trusts her ear for color, and has spent more than twenty years learning precisely when a painting is finished and when it only looks that way.
The Car in the Middle of the Road
By Nasha Maryam
Nasha Maryam paints deserts and coastlines from memory, working in Sharjah with acrylics, texture paste, and a slow-drying medium that buys her time.
The Weight of an Empty Jerrycan
By Iyanuoluwa Babalola
Lagos painter Iyanuoluwa Babalola on rough surfaces, deliberate omissions, and a coming work about addiction he hasn't started yet.
Benjamin Omoike Starts Every Piece With Rope
By Benjamin Omoike
The Ogun State artist builds figures from rope, sorted fabric, and hand-mixed pigment. His method is slow, material-first, and harder to copy than it looks.
Six Layers for a Shirt Nobody Ironed
By Kais
Kais paints Disney characters onto real dollar bills—not as nostalgia, but as a record of the daily performance of wealth he watches in Dubai.
The Gun, the Circle, and the Black Canvas
By Olumide Ajayi
Olumide Ajayi works in batches—three or four canvases at once—and hides numbers in the paint. The Ibadan painter is only getting started.
From a Desolate Place, the Lights Come On
By Deeride
Dubai-based abstract artist Deeride builds layered, textured canvases from depression, travel, and the memory of standing in the dark watching the Aurora Borealis ignite.
The Resistance Is Only in the Human
By xUEkA
Portuguese painter xUEkA spent years building structures as a civil engineer. Now he builds visual languages — and collectors on four continents are paying attention.
The Dirt Is the Point
By Pipe obando
Colombian artist Pipe Obando draws racing helmets and vintage cars in charcoal from his home in Austria. He has two solo shows booked in Vienna and a practice that is, by his own account, barely two.
What Holds the Truth of the Work
By Faith Gbadero
Faith Gbadero's paintings sit with unresolved feeling. The Ogbomoso-based artist on rawness, restraint, and what nearly killed 'Adesewa'.