Oluseye Ogunlesi’s work Exploring “Black Being Across Themes” Earned him the Breakthrough Artist Award by the Toronto Arts Foundation

Nigerian-Canadian artist Oluseye Ogunlesi, this April was one of the five winners honoured at Toronto Arts Foundation’s annual Toronto Arts Awards Lunch. He won the Breaththrough Artist Award taking home a $10,000 cash prize. His work was described by the assessment panel as “earth-shatteringly beautiful, beguiling, and enthralling.”

Ogunlesi describes his work as exploring “Black being across themes”. He uses what he calls “diasporic debris”, a term he coined to describe objects and discarded materials he collects from his travels across the Atlantic, in his practice. “These transformational objects are recast into sculpture, installation, performance and photography and their explorations contextualize my personal narratives within a broader examination of Black and Afro-Diasporic identities and cultures, migration, and spiritual traditions,” he told Toronto Arts Foundation.

Describing his practice in more detail, Ogunlesi said: “I embrace the notion of Blackness as divine, fluid and unfixed; unbound by time, space, and geographies. As such my work bends the ancestral with the contemporary; the traditional with the modern; the physical with the spiritual; the new with the old; and the past with the future. I am moved to create because everywhere I have been – in Canada and abroad – there are untold stories and unacknowledged histories of Black people, spectacular stories of resilience, hope, joy, and struggle; stories which speak to our collective humanity, universal truths and the unquenchable thirst for survival. My work always begins with the oral histories which are passed on to me, and through a research driven practice, I translate these anecdotes and historical narratives into formal markers of Black and Afro-Diasporic life.”

Ogunlesi has exhibited at The Albright-Knox Musuem, Buffalo (2022); Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto (2021); The Agnes Etherington Art Center, Queen’s University, Kingston (2021); and The Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (2015).

The Breakthrough Artist Award celebrates the accomplishments and future potential of an emerging Toronto artist working in any discipline. The award is sponsored by Susan Crocker and John Hunkin.

Other winners were: Nia Centre for the Arts (Arts For Youth Award); R.I.S.E Edutainment (Community Arts Award); Naomi Johnson (Margo Bindhardt and Rita Davies Award); and Joy Lapps (Muriel Sherrin Award).

Photo Credits: Instagram/@olu.seye

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