Ofunne Azinge Nigerian-British, b. 1998

Ofunne Azinge is a Nigerian British artist whose practice merges painting, photography, and image transfer to explore cultural identity and the politics of representation. Moving between more than eleven homes between Nigeria and the UK, she first turned to photography as a way of processing a fragmented upbringing shaped by shifting cultural contexts, grief, and questions of belonging. Returning to painting, Azinge developed a personalised image transfer technique that fuses both media, layering personal archives, community photographs, and contributions from her sitters into richly textured compositions that collapse the boundaries between the personal and the collective.

At the core of Azinge's practice is a sustained focus on women. What began as a tribute to those who raised her has evolved into a broader documentation of Black women across London and beyond. Each sitter is invited to choose how they wish to be seen, often contributing their own photographs, transforming each portrait into an act of collaboration and empowerment. Drawing on the visual language of photography, Azinge's large-scale works depict women in poses historically reserved for masculine authority, subtly subverting power structures and allowing her subjects to occupy space on their own terms.

Azinge conceives of her practice as a form of documentation, building an ongoing archive of cultures and communities historically marginalised within painting. For the artist, home is not a fixed location but a connection, articulated through her belief that anywhere there is a Black woman is a place of belonging. Colour holds particular political significance within her work. By refusing to use white paint when depicting bodies and instead layering tones of black, blue, and purple, Azinge rejects the symbolic hierarchies embedded within traditional painting, ensuring her subjects are rendered with depth, dignity, and presence. Through this reimagining of portraiture, its symbols, subjects, and poses, Azinge constructs a visual community grounded in strength, admiration, and collective empowerment.

Born in Nigeria (1998), Ofunne Azinge lives and works in London. She graduated with an MA in Painting from Manchester School of Art in 2021. The artist has been included in numerous national and international group exhibitions, including the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition (2021), where she was selected as a Curator's Choice by Yinka Shonibare, 'Reclaiming the Nymph: A Force of Nature' at Gillian Jason Gallery, London (2022), and 'Passports Please' at Subtitle Lab, hosted by Pi Artworks, London (2022). In 2023, her work was exhibited internationally in 'Tales for a Stranger', curated by Azu Nwagbogu at Maruani Mercier, Zaventem, Belgium. Following the continued development of her practice, in 2025 Azinge participated in the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair with Gillian Jason Gallery and presented her first solo exhibition with the gallery, 'Home is Where My Feet Land', later that year. In 2026, Azinge will exhibit with Gillian Jason Gallery at Frieze Expo Chicago.