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Born in Columbia,Missouri, Anthony Olubunmi Akinbola, is a first-generation American raised by Nigerian parents in the United States and Nigeria. His layered, richly colored compositions celebrate and signify the distinct cultures that shape his identity. The artist’s signature Camouflage paintings, consisting of single and multi-panel works, utilize the ubiquitous du-rag as their primary material. Universally available and possessed of significant cultural context, the du-rag represents for Akinbola a readymade object that engages the conceptual strategies of Marcel Duchamp and other significant artistic predecessors. Throughout his work Akinbola unpacks the rituals and histories connecting Africa and America, addressing the power of fetishization around cultural objects.
His previous interview on Yale University radio can be found here.
Anthony Olubunmi Akinbola recently was recently selected for the Pullman Yards Artist Residency, which will begin in early 2026. He also recently completed his residency at Black Rock Senegal in Dakar. In 2024, he was named Artist-in-Residence at Dragon Hill in France and in 2022, Akinbola was selected to be in The Artsy Vanguard, an annual feature spotlighting the most promising artists working today. That same year, Akinbola was also awarded the Silver Arts Project residency in New York. In 2019, he was awarded the Van Lier Fellowship and named the eighth Museum of Arts and Design Artist Fellow, which resulted in a solo exhibition at the museum. Akinbola was also selected for the Anderson Ranch Art Center Residency in 2017.
Akinbola has exhibited his work in group and individual shows at renowned institutions such as the SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, GA; the Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco, San Francisco, CA; Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, Germany; The Queens Museum, New York; the Randall Recreation Center, Washington D.C.; the August Wilson African American Cultural Center, Pittsburgh, PA; the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI; the Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, MO; Kunsthaus Graz, Graz, Austria; the Bruce Museum, Greenwich, CT; and the Museum of Art and Design, New York, NY, among others.
