We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kofoworola Adebiyi a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Kofoworola thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

I recently curated and organized the first ever “artofpath” group exhibition in my hometown Lagos, Nigeria.

The exhibit was purposed towards launching and fulfilling a longtime creative vision to inspire healing through the visual arts and poetry. Art has the ability to provide comfort amidst suffering. I believe this comfort can inspire lives with the strength and faith needed to unveil their own vulnerability and walk the journey unto holistic healing and this belief served as an undeniable catalyst in the establishment of this exhibition.

In addition to this vision, the exhibition also keyed into the mission of advocating for the arts in Nigeria by supporting the featured emerging artists with financial honorariums and in the building of their artistic presence in Lagos, Nigeria and beyond.

Being the pioneer of the vision, drove me to work with a lot of initiative, particularly in the areas of fundraising and selecting a group of artists whose creative practice aligned with the vision. In addition to this, the exhibition awarded me primary responsibility of planning, strategizing, marketing and overall establishment of the event. As such, I was very grateful to have the support of an old friend and present professional curator who worked alongside me doing important groundwork on site in Lagos as I carried out a majority of my work and planning virtually, not being physically present at the time. This experience significantly enlarged my organizational capacity and understanding of leadership, teamwork and perseverance which eventually blossomed into the fulfilling unveiling of a stunning collection of paintings that reflected journeys of faith and psychological identity portrayed by I and 3 other artists all born and based in Nigeria. I am still amazed at the great turnout we had, an attendance of over 50 people at the opening night alone.

Kofoworola, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

As an ethnically Yoruba person, I grew up in Lagos, Nigeria for most of my life, relocating to the northeastern region of the United States at 17 to pursue my college education. In my undergraduate years at the University of Rhode Island, I double majored in the divergent fields of Fine Arts and Medical Laboratory Sciences, and later completed their respective Bachelor degrees of Arts and Science. During this time however, I grew more fascinated with interdisciplinary connections between human psychology and art, and began exploring my artistic work as a way to process emotion and spirituality alongside various complex narratives present within the human mind.

Overtime, my work evolved in clarity, revealing a fascination with the distinctive capacity of painting and poetry to address human development and psychological wounded-ness, which I explore in connection to my faith and cultural identity.
Through the rendering of the human figure, I engage personal and vicarious stories of wounded-ness and transformation, conveying marked experiences able to shape one’s psychological identity. I consider the human mind a field of exploration, imbued with clues to identity; ‘what shapes us’, and brokenness; ‘what has wounded and perhaps continues to wound us’, shaping and reinforcing the identities we currently project.

I am moved by these explorations because they hold value to healing, both in the individualistic and communal sense. For this reason, I consider my work interdisciplinary, as I find that I wade through the waters of the creative world, the psychological world and the spiritual world. For me, the spiritual world is interpreted rather intuitively through my own palpable experience of the God of the Bible described in Christian Spirituality. Naturally, my interests in specific topics related to psychological experience and wounded-ness, are tied to my own history; both cultural; a Yoruba Nigerian in diaspora, and developmental; my current lifespan of Infancy to early adulthood, which dialogues my own experiences of psychological wounded-ness: trauma, grief and loss alongside a pursuit of mental resilience and holistic healing.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

My pull towards making has persisted across my lifespan. At a time, it became driven by a pursuit of the therapeutic and cathartic experience I often encountered when I would make. Still, I found in those times, that my creations failed to provide the long term relief and creative fulfillment I desired.

Along this journey I experienced major life events that led me to confront my faith in God as I was raised in a Christian household and went to church often. This confrontation eventually led to a rekindling of genuine faith that was not imposed by duty or parental expectation but rather a genuine desire to know my Creator and live in light of this knowledge. This experience served as a major landmark for the evolution and present core of my work. My work aims to distill covert issues of psychological wounded-ness and suffering, presenting the vulnerability of these human experiences which when expressed are able to engender healing and liberate identity. I do this with overarching knowledge gleaned from personal experience that true healing is encountered through Jesus Christ. As such this serves as the driving force that moves me to continually create as I find the prospective ability of my works to act as a balm of comfort and catalyst for healing.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

My art offers the comfort of beauty alongside my intuitive perspective of the commonality of the human experience as it pertains to unseen suffering. It gently offers the truth that we are not alone on life’s journey, which can at times be a catalysing element to our current realities if we embrace it, as it provides permission to own our wounds no matter how deep or ugly, which often serves as the first step towards walking our individual journeys of healing. The wonder that suffering and wounded-ness can be portrayed so beautifully, is a world of depth to consider; one that begins to unveil the wondrous nature of God’s creative intentionality and the interconnectedness of humankind. This, to me, is greatly rewarding.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://artofpath.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/artofpath
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kofoworola-adebiyi-309897212