Nigerian hyper-realistic artist, Olumide Oresegun, is returning to Mydrim Gallery, for the fourth time to stage his solo show. The show, with 27 works, is slated for July 18 to August 8, 2026. Titled Threads Of Heritage, Cultural Weaving, this is his third solo since 2024.

For Oresegun, thread… is both a symbolic bridge and a structural foundation, linking the high-contrast energy of his portraiture to the tactile history found within a still life composition. The work in this show merges to demonstrate that cultural identity is a composite of what is projected to the world and the domestic artefacts preserved in silence.

By showcasing portraits behind the cool, reflective sheen of sunglasses alongside the gritty, hyper-real textures of copper and lace, Oresegun is exploring the materiality of memory itself.
He describes the objects as not merely items, but vessels of heritage that share a thread with the living, breathing subjects of his paintings.

He remarked that the meticulous detail in the weathered surfaces of a vase mirrors, the intricate spirit of the figures depicted, “proving that our history is etched into the very things we touch and the way we see ourselves.”

This merging of themes creates a dialogue where the contemporary pop aesthetic loses its vanity and gains a soul, anchored by the weight of tradition. It is a curated look at how we carry our foundations with us, turning every modern interaction into an act of cultural preservation and every still life into a living portrait of a lineage.

For a long time, Oresegun’s world was defined by the physics of a single droplet. During his Water Series, he was obsessed with the way light refracted through water on a child’s cheek or the way a heavy downpour clung to braided hair. In those days, water was his language, it represented the raw, unadorned state of humanity; clean, vulnerable, and essential.

Those paintings were a baptism of the soul, a liquid meditation on purity and the fleeting moments of youth.

“But art, like life, cannot stay in the water forever. You eventually have to step out into the sun. The shift happened while he was painting an elderly man. He was focusing on the moisture on his brow, but then he looked past the water into the deep lines of his skin and realized that while water is beautiful, it evaporates. What remains is the history, the pride, and the things we choose to drape over ourselves to tell the world who we are.”

He said he felt an urgent need to move from a ‘State of Nature’ to a State of Being’ which led to his ‘Royal Inheritance’ style. He traded his fluid, transparent blues for the opacity of Cadmium Yellow and Cobalt Teal. His subjects are no longer passive figures receiving the grace of the rain. Those children who once danced under his brushes in 2016 have grown into the striking men and women who grace his current work.

“I chose the title because I have been evolving over two decades. The Thread is a symbolic word I used to describe the creativity that goes into the work. It’s a tool that joins two things together.”

Speaking on hosting the artist, curator, Mydrim Gallery, Idowu Bankole, said: “I saw his works on CNN and other platforms when I was still in school. It’s a privilege to see him back to Mydrim Gallery. I’m optimistic about this show.”