About - Josephobanubi

BIO

Joseph Obanubi is a creative artist who lives and works between New York and Philadelphia. Obanubi holds Masters degrees in New media from the University of Illinois, urbana- Champaign and Graphic design from the University of Lagos, Nigeria. Their practice spans across Visual Art/Design, Art Direction, and Art Education. Obanubi's making process involves digital, tactile and (multi) sensory experimentation. Their creative practice is interested in questioning, engaging, and reconstructing understandings of identity, time, place and translation through digital, tactile, and multi-sensory experimentation. They describe their art making practice as a visual bricolage, a (re)construction of fragments found in everyday experiences, taken from their original context into another.

Obanubi has exhibited at the Research Centre for Society, Technology and Ecology in Africa, Bayreuth, Germany (2025), Krannert Art Museum, Illinois, USA (2025), Museum of Photography Lianzhou, China (2024), Hi-Flow Geneva, Switzerland (2022), Grand Palais Ephemere, Paris, France (2022), Rieterpark, Museum Rietberg, Germany(2022), African Artist Foundation, Lagos, Nigeria (2021), Musee Mohammed VI d’ art Moderne et contemporain, Rabat Morocco (2021), Magnin-a Gallery, Paris, France (2020), Sharjah Art Foundation, 2020, Darmstädter Tage d. Fotografie Festival, Darmstadt, Germany, (2020), Carreau du Temple, Paris, France (2019) and Somerset House, London, United Kingdom (2019).

Their practice has been recognized by the British council, Mellon Foundation, Contemporary African Photography Prize, Google Arts And Culture, CNN style, amongst others. Obanubi was the winner of Kate Neal Kinley Memorial Fellowship, 2024, Contemporary African Photography Prize 2021 and Institut français and La Cité internationale des Arts creation prize 2020

Personal Statement

'My work/process is one of compositing, both conceptually and literally, with various media. This approach allows for an inquiry into authorship regarding image making as it presents opportunities to question ownership in the construction and consumption of images. Using an auto-ethnographic approach, I interrogate how space, history, and agency converge in visual storytelling. I specifically focus on what I call “identity in transition,” a notion of identity that is grounded in a praxis of lived experience, shaped by mobility, memory, the politics of translation, and the potential of a Black diaspora alliance. I probe how identity and place are linked through the cyclical, fixed, and fluid nature of time and space, a reality where time is both familiar and unfamiliar. This exploration is influenced by a theoretical framework rooted in Black futurity and phenomenology'