WE ARE WHAT WE CUT DOWN by Abraham Adewole
Explore Mondoir Studio
Medium: Reclaimed wood on board.
Dimensions: 16 x 18 in
Year: 2026
Price: $1000.00 USD
Status: available
Look at what we have cut down. It has become a portrait of us. It’s getting hotter every year, yet we keep cutting down the very trees that help protect and sustain us. A tree is not just wood. This work brings discarded wood and wood from a chair that had been part of a home for 40 years together to form a portrait of us. Tree helps regulate our environment, stores carbon, provides food and shelter, protects biodiversity and supports the systems we depend on to live. When we cut down trees without thinking about what replaces them, we are not only cutting down trees. We are cutting down a part of ourselves. This portrait reveals an existing truth: what we cut down can become part of who we are. So, look again at what you have cut down. But regeneration should not end with the artwork. 20% of the sale will go toward planting trees.
Why collect this work?
A face assembled from small rectilinear pieces appears compressed within a rough border of larger forms, making human identity seem materially entangled with what has been cut and discarded.
- Adewole describes his practice as transforming discarded wood into portraits concerned with regeneration and human dependence on trees. Here, that stated purpose is sharpened by making the salvaged material constitute the person rather than merely surround them.
- In the photograph, green and red blocks divide the face unevenly, while dark, irregular pieces press around its head and shoulders against a yellow field. The recognizable eyes and mouth hold the fragmented structure together without resolving it into a seamless likeness.
- The documented reclaimed wood on board creates physical relief and lets differences of scale carry meaning. Small units build facial detail; larger remnants remain visibly resistant to pictorial illusion.
- Dated 2026 and catalogued at 16 by 18 inches, the work gives a concrete form to an environmental claim: extraction returns as self-portrait, linking material reuse with accountability for what replaces a felled tree.
About the Artist
Abraham Adewole
Abraham Adewole is an artist on Mondoir Studio. Artistic discipline: painting. Based in OGBOMOSO, NG.
Nationality: Nigerian
I am a contemporary visual artist working primarily with discarded old furniture and reclaimed wood.
