Kemi Onabulé (b. 1995, London) works across a wide range of media drawing on her rich Greek, English and Nigerian heritage, presenting a diverse awareness that spans history and the present whilst also looking to the future. She voyages through landscape, exploring our relationship to the natural world and our current ecological predicament. The work portrays places and people who seem untouched, almost otherworldly, harmonious and at one with the landscape they inhabit.

Onabulé draws on the depiction of people from ancient cultures, seeing humans and souls as more symbolic rather than individualistic. She expands on the idea of the everyman, of universal, collective experience. Her work often depicts figures in landscapes standing, or lying, in verdant forests and scorched plains amid fronds of foliage and long shadows with mountains and rivers, skies and wildfires. They are often imbued with the oppositional forces of mystery and danger. Her works straddle longing and irony, exploring how we have lost our way with regards to our relationship to the natural world and asking questions about how we might find our way back.

Onabulé gained a BA (Hons), Fine Art: Painting at the Wimbledon College of Art, London, UK. She has shown in London, Berlin and Los Angeles since 2015 and was included in the exhibition Conversations at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, UK. Onabulé lives and works in London.