“Painting is like a conversation for me and every stroke prompts a certain type of response and you just go on, trying to balance the whole equation and at the end a beautiful picture is painted”.
Edozie Anedu is a self taught artist based in Benin City, Nigeria. Working primarily with oils, acrylics, pastels and recycled materials, Anedu’s paintings employ elemental forms and figures that verge on the abstract. He references graffiti and mural art traditions to focus his work on popular culture, music and fashion, socio political ideologies and the human condition.
Edozie Anedu is a consummate painter whose spirited color palette the artist subjects to exhilarating experiments which draw from diverse materials and design principles. A prominent feature of his artistic practice is the exploration of self and how an artist’s understanding of the world influences his ability to reflect on social issues and offer timely social commentary. Anedu’s first solo exhibition Mistakes I Chose to Keep, curated by Wunika Mukan, was held in 2019. He has also participated in notable group exhibitions in the United States (Bill Brady Gallery), the United Kingdom (Unit London) and in Nigeria (kó Gallery, Thought Pyramid Art Centre).
Drawing from personal experience, Anedu’s unflinching use of colour and often aggressive brush strokes express a freedom of emotion that commands the attention. His childlike and seemingly haphazard strokes are in conversation with his own coming of age story – a journey of excitement, adjustments and hopeful rush to the future. His work embraces a synthesis of innocence, trial and error, memory and melancholy.