Suraj Adekola
Contemporary Visual Artist
Painting | Installation | Drawing
Manchester, United Kingdom
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Ìṣura: Treasure
Selected from ongoing Body of Work
I make paintings and textile-based works using Adire, coffee-dyed cloth and other materials that I cut, stain, layer, distress and reconstruct. I am interested in how material can open questions about memory, cultural inheritance, migration, value, emotion and our relationship to home.
Ìṣura means “Treasure” in Yoruba. I began working with Adire during my MA period in Manchester, at a time when I was thinking more closely about my relationship with cultural heritage while living away from Nigeria. Adire connected that question to Abeokuta, a place I knew through childhood visits with my family and continue to have a relationship with today. I now bring Adire from Abeokuta into my Manchester studio, where I work with it alongside coffee-dyed cloth and other materials through cutting, staining, layering, ageing, distressing, bonding and reconstruction.
Ìṣura grew from my interest in treasure beyond monetary worth: what we inherit, carry, preserve, overlook and learn to value differently over time. The works do not offer a fixed definition of treasure. They allow me to keep asking how value can emerge through material, memory and experience, and how migration, inheritance, belonging, emotion and our relationship to home can change what we recognise as valuable.
About the Artist
Suraj Adekola is a Nigerian contemporary artist based in Manchester UK, working across painting, textile, drawing, and installation.
Born in Lagos, his practice draws on his relationship with Abeokuta and his present-day studio life in Manchester, bringing lived experience into sustained material experimentation.
Explore earlier and continuing bodies of work that trace the development of my practice.
In the Studio
My works often begin with a question rather than a predetermined image. Cutting, staining, layering, distressing, bonding and reconstructing materials become part of how I think through that question as the work develops.
