Queen of Dreams

About the artist

Born in Lagos in 1961, Duke Asidere is one of Nigeria’s most established contemporary painters. He earned a first class degree in painting from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria in 1988 and an MFA in painting there in 1990, studying under Gani Odutokun, whose influence on his thinking was lasting. He then joined the art department at Auchi Polytechnic, where, alongside Ben Osaghae and Sam Ovraiti, he helped establish Auchi as a defining school of colour in Nigerian painting, before opening his Lagos studio in 1995. His figures, often headless or limbless, and his crowded urban scenes carry political and social commentary through irony, thick strokes of vivid colour, and an economy of form and line. Lagos and its women recur across his work, rendered with a languid calm at odds with the city’s restless energy, a sustained homage to the strength of the women who raised him. He has exhibited widely in Nigeria and abroad, including Mood Colour Harmony in Paris in 2016, and his work appears on the secondary market through Arthouse Contemporary in Lagos.