Titilola Fagbemi

BIOGRAPHY

Titilola Fagbemi (b. 1999) is a self-taught Nigerian artist based in Lagos. Her interest in art was shaped from an early age by her mother’s love for wooden sculptures and figurative paintings, fostering a childhood immersed in visual culture. Originally trained in Business Administration, she graduated with first-class honours from Covenant University in 2018 before committing fully to her artistic practice.

Fagbemi began working with pencil and gel ink, developing intricate line-based works focused on the concept of “beauty despite scarification.” Since 2020, her practice has evolved to encompass mixed media—charcoal, digital print, oil, and acrylic—through which she explores portraiture as a site of emotional, psychological, and cultural inquiry. Her paintings navigate themes of imperfection, memory, and vulnerability, using figures and environments to reflect the complexities of human experience.

Her work draws influence from artists such as Rembrandt, Ben Enwonwu, Polly Alakija, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, and she has exhibited in group shows including Young Contemporaries Boot Camp (Rele Arts Foundation, 2021), What About Love (Angels and Muse, 2022), Spectrum (DICAA, 2022), The Kids Are Not Alright (AMG Gallery, 2022), and her solo presentation Convergence with Forme Femine (2023).
 

STATEMENT

I paint to hold onto what time tries to erase.

My artistic practice explores the complexities of life—its psychological, historical, and cultural layers. Nostalgia is central to my work, capturing hazy, in-between moments, misplaced emotions, and forgotten histories that linger and shape us.

These paintings delve into the layered experience of daughterhood—what it means to exist in spaces shaped by absence, expectation, and the quiet negotiations of identity. It is about being a daughter with barely any memory of a father, a daughter growing up as the only girl among brothers, and a daughter learning to let go—to surrender, not out of weakness, but out of trust.

Through the interplay of deep umbers, melancholic blues, muted golds, and shifting light and shadow, I navigate the tensions between memory and release, between what is inherited and what must be left behind in a space that feels both familiar and elusive.

At its core, this work is a meditation on remembrance and relinquishment.