Listen to me carefully, you bunch of snobs who think you know everything about contemporary art, let me tell you about Jadé Fadojutimi, born in 1993 in London, an artist who shatters your petty certainties like a supernova in a summer sky. I already know what you’re going to say: “Yet another young artist overhyped by the market!” But before you go back to sipping your vintage champagne at your fancy openings, take a moment to hear why you’re dead wrong.
In her studio in southeast London, transformed into an experimental lab worthy of the greatest alchemists, she engages in a frenetic dance with her canvases, often at night, like a modern priestess summoning the spirits of creation. The comparison isn’t gratuitous: she herself describes her creative process as “witchcraft”. And when you look at her monumental works, some exceeding three meters in width, you’ll understand why. These aren’t mere paintings; they’re dimensional portals to a world where synesthesia reigns supreme.
Take “The Woven Warped Garden of Ponder” (2021), sold for $2 million at Christie’s. This canvas isn’t just an abstract composition; it’s a total sensory experience that plunges us into a bath of chromatic sensations. Deep blues blend with bursts of red and orange in a cosmic dance that makes Turner’s works look like tranquil postcards. But don’t fall into the easy trap of seeing her solely as an heir to abstract expressionism. That would be like reducing Serge Gainsbourg to just a French singer.
What’s happening here is far deeper and aligns directly with the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. This French philosopher explained that perception is not a passive reception of the world but a constant interaction between our body and our environment. Fadojutimi perfectly embodies this theory in her artistic practice. Every brushstroke, every splash of color is a direct manifestation of this visceral interaction with the world around her. When she paints, she doesn’t merely represent what she sees – she translates into colors and forms the very experience of perception.
In “How to Protect a Smile” (2022), exhibited at the Hepworth Wakefield, she uses photosensitive paints that change color over time. This monumental work isn’t just a technical feat; it’s a living metaphor for our ever-changing existence, never truly fixed. The layers of paint overlap like strata of consciousness, creating a visual presence that reminds us our identity is never static but always becoming.
And this is where the magic truly happens. Because Fadojutimi isn’t just a painter applying colors to a canvas. No, she’s an explorer of the ineffable, a concept so dear to Vladimir Jankélévitch. For this philosopher, the ineffable isn’t what cannot be said but what requires an infinity of words to express. Fadojutimi’s canvases are precisely that: attempts to articulate the unutterable, to paint the unpaintable.
Consider her use of color. For her, it’s not just an aesthetic tool; it’s a language in its own right, a way to communicate emotions that elude conventional vocabulary. She has developed what she calls “emotional synesthesia” – every emotion translates into a specific color. Green isn’t just green; it’s the visual manifestation of a particular state of being. This approach strikingly echoes Wassily Kandinsky’s theories on the correspondence between colors and sounds, but Fadojutimi takes the concept even further.
In her studio, surrounded by her plants, childhood toys, and screens streaming Japanese anime, she creates a total environment that fuels her creativity. It’s not just a workspace; it’s a creative ecosystem where every element contributes to the final alchemy. The nights she spends painting aren’t mere work sessions; they’re rituals of transformation where the artist becomes a medium, channeling creative forces beyond individual will.
And let’s talk about the influence of Japanese culture on her work. Unlike so many Western artists who settle for a superficial Japonism, Fadojutimi has developed a genuine understanding of Japanese aesthetics. Her love for anime isn’t a fleeting whim; it’s a fundamental influence that has shaped her artistic vision since childhood. In her works, we find the same ability to create parallel worlds that are both familiar and alien, the same attention to subtle transitions, the same celebration of the ephemeral.
The question of identity runs through her work like a burning thread. As a British artist of Nigerian descent, she could have easily fallen into the clichés of “postcolonial” art. But no, she transcends these easy categories to create something much more universal. Her canvases speak not so much of cultural identity as of human identity in its broadest sense. They explore that precise moment when we look in the mirror and aren’t quite sure who we are anymore.
“A Permeable Existence” (2022) perhaps best illustrates this quest. The layers of paint interpenetrate like different states of consciousness, creating a pictorial space that is both deeply personal and strangely universal. Forms emerge and dissolve like half-forgotten memories, creating an emotional cartography that speaks to all of us.
But what makes her work truly revolutionary is that she creates pieces that are both intellectually stimulating and viscerally powerful. At a time when so many contemporary artists lose themselves in either arid conceptualism or easy expressionism, Fadojutimi achieves the feat of creating art that engages both mind and senses.
Her creative process is itself a performance. She literally dances with her canvases, sometimes taking a running start to apply paint, creating movements that resemble choreography more than traditional painting sessions. This physicality is reflected in the finished works, where every gesture is captured as a moment frozen in time, a trace of this nocturnal dance with creation.
And let’s not even talk about her use of space. Her large canvases aren’t simply big to impress collectors – their size is intrinsic to their meaning. They create immersive environments that force us to rethink our relationship with pictorial space. These aren’t windows into another world, as in the tradition of Western painting, but portals inviting us to physically enter the space of the painting.
“The Empress of the Plants” (2022), at eight meters long, is not so much a painting as a total environment, an installation that envelops us in its chromatic universe. The colors vibrate and pulse like living beings, creating an experience as close to virtual reality as it is to traditional painting.
But perhaps the most impressive thing about her work is her ability to remain authentic despite meteoric commercial success. While so many artists are corrupted by the market, churning out endless variations of their greatest hits, Fadojutimi continues to experiment, take risks, and push the boundaries of what painting can be.
Her move to Gagosian in 2022 could have marked the beginning of an excessive commercialization of her work. Instead, she used the gallery’s resources to create even more ambitious, radical pieces. It’s rare, very rare, to see an artist use the system to their advantage without being absorbed by it.
And perhaps this is where Jadé Fadojutimi’s true importance lies in the contemporary art landscape. She shows us that it’s still possible to create authentic, personal art while navigating the murky waters of the contemporary art market. Her works are living proof that painting isn’t dead, that it continues to evolve and reinvent itself. Her work also reminds us of the unique power of painting: its ability to create experiences that engage our whole being, not just our eyes. Her canvases aren’t objects to be passively contemplated; they’re invitations to experience, portals to other states of consciousness.
So yes, you can keep seeing her canvases as mere explosions of abstract colors, you can keep reducing her success to a speculative art market bubble. But you’d be missing the point. What Fadojutimi offers us is far more than an aesthetic experience – it’s an invitation to rethink our relationship with the sensory world, to explore those areas of our experience that escape verbal language.
In fifty years, when art historians look back, they won’t just see Jadé Fadojutimi as an artist who found early success, but as someone who fundamentally changed our understanding of what painting can be in the 21st century. And if you don’t believe me, go see her works for yourself. But be warned: you might not emerge unscathed from this encounter with the ineffable.