Some artists paint what they see. Oluwanifemi Abiodun — known as The Tall Artist — paints, films, and archives what refuses to leave his mind. In this Craftzine feature, he opens up about turning personal pain into public art, and why documenting the process matters as much as the finished piece.
Let’s start with you, who is Abiodun Oluwanifemi and what does your work as a Visual Artist look like day to day, from concept through to execution across film, photography, painting, or body art?
Oluwanifemi Abiodun, popularly known as The Tall Artist, is a multidisciplinary visual artist, filmmaker and storyteller. I see myself less as someone who is simply creating aesthetics and more as someone who is trying to document, question and interpret the world around me. My practice moves across painting, photography, film, digital art, augmented reality and body art.
I don’t really believe in being restricted to one medium because, for me, the story determines the medium. If a story needs to live on canvas, I paint it. If it needs the human body, I use body art. If it needs movement, sound and time, I make a film. If photography is the strongest way to preserve a particular moment, then I photograph it. That approach means that my day-to-day practice can look very different from one project to another.
Usually, everything starts with an idea, a question, a memory or something I’ve encountered that refuses to leave my mind. I spend time researching and thinking about what the subject means to me before I start making anything. Sometimes that research is cultural; sometimes it comes from conversations, personal experiences, photographs or places I’ve visited or simply observing people and the environment around me.
From there, I begin to translate the idea into a visual language. I think about composition, colour, symbols, the people involved, and importantly, what I want the audience to feel or question. With a painting, that could mean making sketches and building the composition on canvas. With photography or film, it might involve finding a location, directing people. With body art, the body itself becomes the canvas, so the process becomes much more collaborative.
I also document a lot of my process. I enjoy the space between the finished artwork and
everything that happens before it. I always believe art is more than the end result; the process itself is art, at the centre of all of this is storytelling. I want my work to leave people with something to think about beyond whether they like the image.
That was a strong intro, but In a country where visual art isn’t always seen as a “serious” career, what drew you to pursuing it fully?
Growing up in Ijebu Ode, I was always drawing. As a child, drawing became a way for me to escape into my own world and express things I couldn’t necessarily put into words. I grew up in an environment where cultism thrived, and I was mostly indoors, so art became a kind of companion.
Eventually, I realised that what I was doing wasn’t just something I enjoyed; it was
also the way I naturally processed the world. But deciding to take it seriously as a career was a different thing. In Nigeria, there is still this idea that creative careers are somehow less stable or less serious than conventional professions. A lot of people are encouraged to pursue careers that provide a more predictable definition of success. So choosing art meant accepting a certain amount of uncertainty.
It means believing in something before there was necessarily evidence that it would
work. To be honest, I’ve tried other things but I wasn’t happy doing it. I didn’t feel fulfilled, so I came back to Art, and I believe that the Art that took me out of Nigeria for the first time has a whole lot to offer me, might just take time.
Let’s talk about your work, you use visuals to tell stories — what stories are you most drawn to telling, and where do they come from? Do you find Nigerian audiences respond differently to certain stories or mediums than others?
I’m most drawn to stories about people. Things like memory, identity, resilience, culture,
and the experiences that shape us. A lot of my work begins with something personal or
something I observe around me, but I’m interested in finding the story within it.
I’m also increasingly drawn to Nigerian and Yoruba stories. Our traditions, spirituality, symbols, and histories. I see my work as part of creating a visual archive of things that deserve to be remembered and re-examined. I see myself as a custodian of culture whose stories are important as we proceed in the digital age
I do think Nigerian audiences respond differently depending on the story and medium. Familiar cultural references often create an immediate connection because people recognise themselves in the work. But I don’t want audience expectations to determine what I make. The story comes first, and the medium is simply the language I choose to tell it.
On this your journey, is there a project — a shoot, a painting, a body art piece
— that changed how you saw yourself as an artist, especially in the face of how the industry or people around you viewed what you do?
I would say my debut solo exhibition, Flesh, Memory and Pink, was a major turning point for me. Before that, I think I was still trying to prove that I could be an artist. The exhibition made me realise that I didn’t have to fit into people’s expectations of what an artist should be. I could take something deeply personal, turn it into a visual language, and create an entire body of work around it.
The project came from a very personal experience with my mother’s accident, but it eventually became a larger conversation about pain, resilience and healing. I interviewed people about difficult experiences they had survived and brought those stories into the work. I created paintings and even made my first short film all around this project and I’m so proud of that.
That experience changed how I saw myself. I stopped thinking so much about whether people considered what I was doing “serious” and became more concerned with whether the work was honest and meaningful to me. It reminded me that I don’t need permission to define what my practice can be. I just need to keep telling the stories I believe are worth telling.
In a country like Nigeria, what’s a misconception Nigerians often have about your specific medium that you wish more people understood, and why do you think it matters for your process (the concept work, the experimentation, the execution) to be documented and seen, not just the finished piece?
One misconception I often encounter is around nude art. In Nigeria, people can quickly
interpret nudity through a sexual or perverted lens, when the human body can also be a subject for vulnerability, identity, beauty, memory and storytelling. I also think there is a misconception around art that explores African culture and tradition.
People sometimes associate our tradition with rituals, fear or something scary, when there is so much more to our cultural heritage. For example, our symbols, stories, philosophy, clothing, spirituality, history and everyday ways of life. That is why I think documenting the process matters. The finished piece is only one part of the
story. The research, experiments, conversations and decisions reveal why the work exists and what I am trying to communicate. When people see the process, they can move beyond their first assumptions and understand the intention behind the work.
What have been some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced building a career in this space in Nigeria, whether that’s funding, visibility, equipment, or cultural acceptance, and what’s been lost when journeys like yours go undocumented or untold?
My biggest challenge is staying authentic while building a career in an industry where it can be tempting to make what is more commercially accepted. I want my work to remain connected to who I am and the stories I want to tell. I want people to look beyond the aesthetics and engage with the history, culture or personal experience behind the work.
I think that is also what gets lost when journeys like mine go undocumented. We lose the
context, the process and, ultimately, pieces of our cultural memory. Documentation allows future generations to understand not just the finished artwork, but the person, place, culture and circumstances that produced it. For me, documenting the journey is part of preserving authenticity and culture.
Lastly, If someone outside the art world stumbled on your work for the first time, what do you want them to walk away understanding, not just about the piece, but about you, your medium, and where you think Nigerian visual art is headed?
I want someone experiencing my work for the first time to become curious about why the
work exists and what I am trying to say. Most importantly, I want my work to communicate that African visual art has a future that is deeply rooted in our identity but isn’t afraid to evolve.
I think we are moving towards a generation of artists who are documenting our culture, questioning our history, and creating new ways of seeing ourselves. I want to be part of that movement using contemporary visual language to tell stories that are authentically ours.
The Tall Artist’s artistic journey is still unfolding, with each new work offering another glimpse of the story he wants to share with the world. To explore more of his work or connect with him, follow his creative journey HERE.
