Ayanfe Olarinde Wields Scribble Art and Photography to showcase beauty in Imperfection
Ayanfe Olarinde is a self-taught visual artist who is currently experimenting with scribble art and photography. She regards art as her own truth and freedom. In other words, art allows her to express herself and brings her calm via self-exploration. Her enthusiasm for scribbling, an art form born of imperfection on her quest for acceptance, led her to pursue art. She is able to unpack her emotions in new and interesting ways as a result of this.
Ayanfe's artistic dynamism links audience from multiple viewpoints, as she uses ink, paint, wire, and abandoned items to create scribbles, doodles, sculptures, paintings, digital art, upcycled artworks, and textures for her scribbles while touching on bigger concerns of self-exploration. Her view has evolved to incorporate photography and mixed media collages as an emotional artist impacted by her path through life.
In her sharing of untold stories, Ayanfe's work has an implicit theme projecting her interests in self-image, identity formation, gender construct, mental health, society's and government's impact. She is also recognized for her interest in conceptual photography.
In 2018, she was a finalist in the GTBank Days of Dorcas photography competition. She was also nominated for the Future Awards Prize for Arts in 2019, and in the same year, she won the First Bank Magic 125 Creative Contest. Notably, Ayanfe exhibited among other photographers at the 25th Bamako Encounters, Mali-OFF show, The Goethe Institute Nigeria and The Nlele Institute's Live-In Desires exhibition in 2019. She was also named one of Nigeria's 100 Most Inspiring Women in 2020. Ayanfe's work has been featured on Reuters News, CNN, Euro News, NowThisNews, Vogue, Channels, Konbini, MSN, Premium Times, Daily Trust, NTA, and RADR Africa.
Ayanfe considers photography as a result of her creative mind, rather than the manufactured aspects of the art. She has the ability to see past the surface of her subject, revealing deep emotional cracks. She has also received positive reviews from critics. She is currently a mentee at the Nlele Institute, as well as the director and curator of Unearthical, an enterprise through which she explores the fashion and fine art photography genres.
See more of her works here
