Nigeria is blessed with so much raw talent that it seems to be its most enduring gift.

From vintage visual maestros like Ben Enwonwu to contemporaries like Victor Ehikhamenor, its visual art scene has endured several decades of evolution. A strong part of its most recent breakouts, the young talented chap Akinokun Isaiah Abiola surfaces at a time where strong demand for heritage-driven, conscious pieces are back with a huge demand in the global art market.

With a bulk of his work asking questions left unanswered for decades, questions about identity, memory, and survival, Isaiah is fast-becoming a cultural icon within the Nigerian/Global art scene. The Nigerian-born, Birmingham-based visual artist works mainly with acrylic, but his practice is more about the stories that follow people across borders. He often interrogates the cultural inheritances that remain active long after migration, and the emotional weight carried by bodies that have been shaped by history, family, loss and belonging. He often also draws from Yoruba history, mythology and storytelling traditions, but in a progressive drift between ancestral memory and contemporary life.

In his 2025 collection, Ibeji, his interest in duality, identity and belonging becomes especially clear. The work draws from the symbolic history of twins, while also responding to the realities of race and how identity is read by society. By placing both unidentical twins in identical turbans, Isaiah blurs the selfish boundaries that the world imposes on skin colour. The painting focuses on celebrating our shared humanity, instead of mourning our differences. Drawing specifically from Nigerian traditions, especially the Yoruba tradition, he explores the cultural dynamics around identifying twins. He also cleverly infuses racial undertones, critiquing the idea of distinguishing the human community based on skin colour.

His ongoing series, Before, During and After Conflict, expands that concern into a broader meditation on violence, grief and renewal. In Arodan (The Messenger), the central figure is a character rooted in Yoruba folklore. His purpose is to act as a mediator, carrying the anxiety of being the diplomat that could save humanity from extinguishing itself. Isaiah uses the Arodan figurative painting as a motif, a symbol of hope in today’s restive world, and a call to embrace peace resolution. He extends his treatise in another figurative painting from the series titled Okunrin Meta (Three Men). Here is an acrylic painting of a kneeling warrior carrying the names, weapons and memories of those who could not continue. By the time the series arrives at Jagun Jagun (Warrior), survival is marked by loss, and a thirst for peace after destruction. It’s a grim painting of a sole survivor in a deathly war, flanked with symbols like empty skulls, dark clouds, and a triumphant soldier atop a horse.

This emotional arc to Isaiah’s social commentary in his art stems from his background in studio practice. Before his current development in the United Kingdom, he trained under Nigerian sculptor Dotun Popoola and contributed to the creation of the 16-foot Oduduwa Sculpture in Ile-Ife. He also worked within Jonathan Imafidor’s studio, developing his approach to portraiture, mural painting and figurative art. That foundation gives his practice a useful tension. Even when he is working on canvas, there is often a sculptural sense of weight, depth, and density of memory, feeling and ideas.

Overall, the north star in Isaiah’s work points towards his maximalist and symbolic expressionism. He’s found a way to translate cultural memory into contemporary socio-political commentary. Much more serious than a satire, and more honest than sheer propaganda, Isaiah’s work reels like prophecy; a honest evaluation of a society that fails to learn from its past or lean into the purpose of peaceful coexistence. It’s also an interesting visual delight, travelling down his catalogue, as one notices the syntax of thickened hues, brushstrokes, expert detailing and the cumulative tension and release that’s tucked into his visual storytelling. A truly gifted artist, Isaiah is poised to be a force majeure in his era.

Finally, what stands out most to me about Isaiah’s practice is the nobility of its ambition. Here’s an unhinged artist exploring heritage, folklore and urban themes to teach, warn, or salvage humanity. His paintings carry a heavy symbolic charge, but they are also emotionally purgative, especially in the way the figures, background and setting all contribute as memoirs of strife, discrimination, grief and resistance. At his best, Isaiah reactivates these folklores, placing them inside contemporary realities around race, migration, conflict and survival. His ability to make old stories and problems feel urgent, while drawing us inside the allure of culture feels like his most stealthy anchor so far.

Born in Nigeria and currently based in Birmingham, United Kingdom, Akinokun Isaiah Abiola is a Nigerian artist most notable for his originality and storytelling. His recent artistic development includes selection for the Arts Council England-funded Billboard Showcase Artist Development Programme in 2025, where he received mentorship and participated in exhibitions, interviews and professional development activities.

He was also a finalist in the Usher Gallery Trust Open Exhibition, Art of the Now, selected from over 900 submissions, and has exhibited with Hammond House Gallery, the Afro-Caribbean Festival in Grimsby, and Life in My City Art Festival in Nigeria. Across these works and experiences, Isaiah is building a practice concerned with cultural continuity, the afterlife of memory, and the fragile but persistent ways people make meaning after displacement and conflict.