Yomi Orimoloye

Lives and works in Ottawa, ON, Canada

Artist statement

My work often explores interiority, memory, relationships, and the physical and mental spaces that shape who we are. I’m interested in people, in the emotional, psychological, and symbolic aspects of being a person in the world. This is why the figure is a recurring presence in my work. Sometimes the figures are explicit, sometimes more abstracted, but the human presence is always central. I’m also interested in storytelling. I often tell stories through a narrative approach, relying on metaphor, composition, colour, accompanying text, and other visual or experiential elements to convey meaning. Storytelling allows me to recollect memory and imagine worlds of “what if?” Bringing these together, along with my experiences and heritage as a Nigerian, I create works that explore identity through a lens of humour. I use simple geometric patterns, vibrant colours, and bold compositions to explore abstraction on familiar objects and the human form. With each painting, I try to capture tension and contradiction, stillness and movement, a mood that is hard to name, and complex emotional landscapes. My aim is to build something that feels emotionally precise, even if visually ambiguous. If successful, the work suggests something that cannot be fully pinned down, existing between clarity and confusion, confidence and doubt. Something that contradicts itself. That, I believe, is what the human experience often feels like.

Artwork