Artist Motunrayo Akinola was born to Nigerian parents in London, England in 1992. His upbringing, divided between his earliest years in London, growing up in Lagos, Nigeria and returning to London for late primary school, provided him with a unique perspective on culture, home, and identity, profoundly influencing his artistic practice. His work, enriched by an architectural background, spans installation, sculpture, and performance, exploring themes of identity, migration, and cultural integration. His art, like his performances, challenges and expands viewer perceptions of common objects and social practices.
Artist Motunrayo Akinola was born in London to Nigerian parents in 1992. His upbringing, divided between his earliest years in London, growing up in Lagos, Nigeria and returning to London for late primary school, provided him with a unique perspective on culture, home, and identity, profoundly influencing his artistic practice. Akinola described his period in Lagos as filled with ‘colors, joy, and rain,’ highlighting the vivid sensory experiences of his time there; his initial experience of moving to London, however, was marked by feelings of being ‘othered,’ which presented him with challenges in adjusting to a new cultural environment (Islington Tribune). Despite this, he resisted the pressure to conform, maintaining his sense of pride in his Nigerian identity. His parents, who had grown up under the weight of British influence, grappled with issues like skin bleaching and hair straightening — practices he questioned as a teenager. His time in London emerged as a period of both personal challenge and growth, during which he navigated the complexities of cultural integration while retaining a strong connection to his heritage.
Akinola’s journey into the arts began with an initial foray into architecture. This discipline sharpened his sense of space and structure, elements that he would carry forward into his later work in the visual arts. His architectural background is evident in the meticulous attention to form and the manipulation of space that characterise his installations and sculptures. Following his architectural studies, he switched to fine art, enrolling at the Royal Academy Schools (RAS), London, and graduating in 2023. During his time at the RAS, Akinola's practice evolved to encompass sculpture, installation, sound, and drawing, frequently incorporating everyday materials, which he transforms into profound expressions of cultural and personal narratives. Akinola utilises imagery and objects, laden with collective memories or with familiar usage, altering or combining them to evoke nostalgia and ritual.
Akinola's performance, Stamp (2021) directly engaged with themes of exclusion and societal boundaries through a live, interactive format. Inspired by the palpable anxieties experienced at Britain’s border control queues, Akinola designed Stamp to mimic the arbitrary nature of immigration and entry processes. In this provocative work, he invited attendees to an event but then selectively denied access to some at the door, mirroring the capricious and often harsh realities of border control. Through this piece, Akinola challenged audiences to confront the discomfort and injustice of exclusion, fostering a critical dialogue on the societal impacts of such practices. In his 2023 final degree show at the RAS, Akinola presented a work featuring a Victorian ceiling crafted from white wallpaper, designed to evoke contrasting emotions and to challenge the viewers' perceptions of familiar objects. The installation aimed to show how the same object could evoke comfort and a glow of nostalgia for some — those who might associate it with a grandmother’s home — while representing oppression for others, particularly in contexts like Nigeria or India, where such designs were introduced through colonial influence.
A pivotal moment was Akinola's placement as the 13th Postgraduate Artist in Residence at the South London Gallery. Here, in 2024, he presented Knees Kiss Ground, an exhibition that explored themes of faith and belonging through the lens of everyday objects, which showcased his ability to weave together complex social and historical narratives into his art. Visitors could enter an immersive installation designed to the exact dimensions of a shipping container, crafted entirely from corrugated cardboard. This piece was not only a reflection on space and confinement, but also served as a metaphor for the movement of people and the experience of diaspora. The exhibition also featured works that drew on architectural and biblical references, using materials such as the hyssop plant, to connect viewers with its thematic underpinnings. These materials and symbols helped bridge cultural and historical divides, creating a dialogue between the viewer and the spaces they inhabit. Knees Kiss Ground also included the sound piece Back at Half Past, I Have my Keys (2024), a looped audio installation that engaged with themes of migration and memory. Another significant piece, Plan and Sections of Slave Ship [the Brooks], juxtaposed the historical imagery of the slave ship with modern narratives of movement and migration, examining the lingering impacts of historical events on contemporary life. Back door – Peckham (2024), a photograph from a performance, further exemplified Akinola's interest in exploring the physical and metaphorical movement between places. In this work, he carried a door made from old shipping pallets through Peckham, in south London, inscribed with the names of local council housing estates. The door symbolised the passage from one cultural and physical space to another, reflecting on issues of home, inheritance, and identity in migrant communities. Akinola’s work is not currently represented in UK public collections.