Oluseye

Oluseye is a Nigerian-Canadian artist, who lives and works nomadically. Born in London in 1986, the artist spent his childhood years in Lagos, Nigeria before moving to Canada.

Using “diasporic debris” — a term he coined to describe the artifacts, discarded materials and found objects he collects from his trans-Atlantic travels — Oluseye explores Black being across themes. These transformational objects are recast into sculpture, performance and photography. Their explorations invoke Oluseye’s personal narratives and travels within a broader examination of Black and diasporic cultures, migration and spiritual traditions. The talismans in his Eminado series physically trace and embody the transgenerational movement of the Black diaspora.

Across his practice, he embraces the notion of Blackness as divine, fluid and unfixed; unbound by time, space, and geographies. As such his work blends 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.

Oluseye has a Bachelor of Commerce from McGill University, Montreal, and a Master of Science in Entrepreneurship from Bayes Business School, City University, London. He has held multiple solo exhibitions including, most recently, Negro Crossing at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Halifax (2025) and Orí Mi Pé at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (2025).

He has participated in group exhibitions at Southern Guild Los Angeles; the Art Museum at the University of Toronto; Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco; Gardiner Museum, Toronto; AKG Buffalo Art Museum; Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto; Agnes Etherington Art Center, Queen’s University; Harlem School of the Arts, New York; Art X Lagos and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, among others.

Oluseye’s first public art commission, Black Ark, installed in Toronto’s Ashbridges Bay Park, is a symbolic vessel of ancestral veneration commemorating the survivors of slavery. He will unveil a new public art project in 2026 at Toronto’s Lassonde Art Trail.

Oluseye was an artist-in-residence at the GUILD Residency in Cape Town in early 2023, where he worked toward his first solo exhibition with Southern Guild, Black Exodus: Summer Departure. Curated in dialogue with his presentation at Southern Guild, his subsequent solo exhibition, Black Exodus: Winter Arrival, opened at Daniel Faria Gallery in Toronto in 2024. Later that year, Oluseye was awarded a residency at the Instituto Sacatar on Itaparica Island in Bahia, Brazil, an important site in his ongoing exploration of Afro-diasporic culture and African-rooted spiritual practices. He has participated widely in talks programmes and special projects, and received the 2023 Breakthrough ArtistAward from The Toronto Arts Foundation. His work is in several public and private collections, including Agnes Etherington Art Centre in Kingston and the Pierce & Hill Harper Art Foundation in Detroit.