Awareness Post (#4)

My awareness post for this quarter is focused on Jadé Fadojutimi. I first encountered her work when I was listening to the episode of the Great Women Artists podcast dedicated to her back in the Quarter One, but I'm revisiting her now because I thought her work was really intriguing. Fadojutimi is primarily a painter, and her work is inspired by Japanese culture and by specific objects. Her work is notable for its bright colors and its gestural mark, and a lot of it focuses on self-reflection, considering "how people engage with life," and she refers to her pieces as "emotional landscapes."

Education and notable career accomplishments:

• BA from Slade School of Fine Art

• MA from Royal College of Art

• 2016 residency in Kyoto

Galleries:

Solo Exhibitions:

• Heliophobia, Pippy Houldsworth Gallery (2017, London)

• She Squalls, Galerie Gisela Capitain (2019, Cologne)

• The Numbing Vibrancy of Characters in Play, PEER (2019, London)

• Jesture, Pippy Houldsworth Gallery (2020, London)

• Yet, Another Pathetic Fallacy, Institute of Contemporary Art Miami (2021, Miami)

• Can we see the colour green because we have a name for it?, The Hepworth Wakefield (2022, Wakefield)

• Frieze booth, Gagosian (2022, London)

• This land escapes me and continues to grow, twelvebooks (2022, Tokyo)

• Memory in Translation, Taka Ishii Gallery (2022, Tokyo)

• Why wilt when? When wilt why? A smile can appear in an echo of laughter, Zweigstelle Capitain at C.A.S.A. Palazzo Degas (2023, Naples)

• Connecting in Silence, Taka Ishii Gallery (2024, Kyoto)

Group Exhibitions*:

• Slade Wotever, A Night of Performance, Sound, Film and Painting, Vauxhall Tavern (2014, London)

• Degree Show, Slade School of Fine Art (2015, London)

• 27th International Student Exhibition, Kyoto City University of Arts Gallery (2016, Kyoto)

• Under the See, The Crypt Gallery (2017, London)

• Hypnagogia, Pippy Houldsworth Gallery (2018, London)

• Secret 7” presents Planar 1/1, NOW Gallery (2020, London)

• Black Faces, White Spaces: Invisibility and Hypervisibility (curated by Aindrea Emelife), Green Family Collection (2021, Dallas)

• METAMORFOSI, Galerie Gisela Capitain (2022, Rome)

• Takeuchi Collection, WHAT MUSEUM (2023, Tokyo)

• Golden Memories, Oketa Collection (2024, Tokyo)

*She's been in so many group exhibitions, so I ended up picking one a year just to keep this list manageable.

Jadé Fadojutimi, There Exists a Glorious World. Its Name? The Land of Sustainable Burdens.

One thing that I find really interesting about this piece is that it walks a really thin line between figurative and more abstract. There are parts that look super clearly like flowers or butterflies to me, and also I could kind of extrapolate a figurative scene from the general space, but also all of that is super subjective. I also love the usage of complimentary colors right next to each other.

Jadé Fadojutimi, The Prolific Beauty of Our Panicked Landscape

I love the linear quality of this piece, especially in all the bright colors with the brushier, less defined lines in the background. I love the purple next to the yellows of the background and the softer background colors paired with the really bright foreground. Also, the red lines definitely seem reminiscent of Japanese characters to me, so the influence from her time in Kyoto really comes through.