Oluwasemilore Delano, from Ogun state, Nigeria, is an artist working between Lagos and London. Her practice continually explores the questions about what it means to depict the figure - not merely as just form, but as a site of perception. Delano is interested in what it means to look, especially when looking is shaped by materials that push back and carry their own histories, contexts, and attitudes.
Materials such as oil paint, concrete, sandbags, charcoal, textured and monochromatic surfaces require the viewer to encounter them, listen to how they want to be handled, rather than impose meaning onto them.
This process is deeply connected to our consideration of Black bodies, and African histories - how we’re allowed to enter them, rather than assuming immediate access. In this, her work becomes about observation as much as representation: how do we see Blackness, and how do the materials we use shape that seeing? “Questions like 'what is a Black rainbow,' charge and challenge her practice because they ask to consider forces, attitudes, and shifting modes of being- that resist singular narratives.”
Through strategies of abstraction—whether through over-saturation or whisper-like language- she seeks ways of engaging with the body using visual vocabularies for touch, memory, and presence. Materials that offer possibilities for how the Black body is understood and its narratives not just as subject, but as a medium, as space, as experience.
Delano studied Architecture at Cambridge University, during which she received the provost prize for her artistic contributions to the university and became the first student to be exhibited in the Kettles Yard Gallery, Cambridge.
In 2021, her work was exhibited at Tate Britain, London, as part of the Life Between Islands opening event and was collected to be included in the archive of the Royal Drawing School as a record of study. She was awarded the Black Academic Futures Scholarship from the University of Oxford (2023) and the Penny Freer Scholarship from Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, for her Master's, where she graduated with a distinction.
Recipient of the ORB Summer 2024 art prize sponsored by Sotheby’s, and was shortlisted for the Royal Society of British Artists Rising Star Award 2024. Delano was the winner of the Lux Magazine and Bicester Village Next Generation Award 2024. Her recent shows include “Tide Below”, a group show at Breakers Gallery, London and End of Year Party (by Adegbola Gallery) at Red Door Gallery, Lagos, an exhibition celebrating the diverse skills of Nigerian and African artists, spanning over 150 years of innovation and various mediums. Solo shows include “The Back of the Sky, at Fleet House, London, in May 2025 and “Between Slumped Shoulder Held the Moon in Waiting,” opening at TAFETA gallery, London, in March 2026.