Janet Adebayo
A painter mapping migration, womanhood and memory through fragmented, layered figuration.
Janet Adebayo's practice sits at the intersection of the personal and the ecological. Her figures, often fragmented and layered, register how bodies absorb the systems around them: migration, labour, grief and the shifting terrain of female community. Drawing on a background in science, she has grown increasingly attentive to ecology, contamination and accumulation. She reads the interconnection of human and environmental systems through the same lens she applies to relationships between women. Works such as "We Are One" and "Call Us Delusional (II)" hold admiration and resentment, visibility and vulnerability, in tension. "Seasons In The Sun" channels grief for her brother into a meditation on who holds us when everything shifts. Across the body of work, community becomes a living network: a structure that can nourish or fail, contaminate or regenerate. Adebayo's paintings ask viewers to locate themselves within that network, tracing identity, survival and belonging back to the people, places and losses that shape them.
Janet Adebayo is a Nigerian-born visual artist based in London, working across painting, sculpture and mixed media. Her practice explores how humans respond, emotionally, physically and environmentally, to the systems around them. Her paintings move between figuration and abstraction, using fragmented bodies and layered surfaces to reflect the imprint of lived experience. A background in science has deepened her interest in ecology, contamination and accumulation, and in the relationships between people and the environments they inhabit. Adebayo's work has been exhibited internationally, and she continues to develop projects linking intimate personal narratives to wider social and environmental questions. Through her practice she invites viewers to consider how identity, place and survival are continually shaped by immediate community. She aims to leave audiences with a renewed sense of connection to themselves, to others and to the community at large.
Based in
Mediums
Themes
Acrylic on canvas; also working in sculpture and mixed media
Migration, womanhood, identity, memory, community, ecology, vulnerability and resilience
Education
2018: Higher National Diploma in Food Technology, Federal Polytechnic Ilaro Nigeria
Selected Exhibitions
2025: Moonlight, Creative Youth and Fusebox, London
2024: Ashawo Who Says You Are a Hoe, Apexart, New York
2024: In This Space, We Exist, AMG Project x Macallan, Nigeria
2023: Transtemporal Travel, Nomadic Art Gallery, Nigeria (2023)
Collections/ Recognition
London, United Kingdom
O'DA Art Gallery, Victoria Island, Nigeria
The.ini.gallery, South Florida, USA
1952 Africa, Lekki Phase I, Lagos; Nomadic Art Gallery, Ikoyi, Lagos
Moeshen Gallery, Abuja, Nigeria
Personal collections in Nigeria, USA, London and Europe
Rhizoscape: The Living Network exhibition in London will be showcasing some of this artist’s work from 19th February to 4th March 2027
Practice Themes
Migration and Memory
Bodies absorb the systems around them: migration, labour, grief and the imprint of lived experience.
Sisterhood and Community
Community is a living network: a structure that can nourish or fail, contaminate or regenerate.
Ecology and Resilience
Identity, place and survival are continually shaped by the people and environments around us.
She draws on personal experiences of migration, womanhood, labour and memory to examine vulnerability, resilience and transformation.
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2025: Moonlight, Creative Youth and Fusebox, London
2024: Ashawo Who Says You Are a Hoe, Apexart, New York
2024: In This Space, We Exist, AMG Project x Macallan, Nigeria
2023: Transtemporal Travel, Nomadic Art Gallery, Nigeria
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Nigeria: O'DA Art Gallery, Victoria Island.
USA: The.ini.gallery, South Florida.
Lagos: 1952 Africa, Lekki Phase I, Lagos State.
Ikoyi, Lagos: Nomadic Art Gallery.
Abuja (Most Recent): Moeshen Gallery.
Private Collections: Nigeria, USA, London and Europe
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Artit: Janet Adenike Adebayo interview (artit.net/spotlight/235).
ThisDay: "An artist's captivating story in a confessional painting", 25 May 2025.
Vanguard: "Nomadic Art Gallery represents Afrobeat of art, Obidairo", 2023.
Daily Trust: "How I made art out of bra straps".
Residency: 1952 Africa Residency, covered by The Guardian Nigeria ("1952 Africa climaxes residency with art exhibition").
The works
Janet Adebayo
Acrylic on Canvas
2024
40.6 x 40.6cm; 16 x 16 in
Price: POA
I didn’t lose this fight.
I’ll blame the past on fatigue and inexperience.
This piece captures a sisterhood that bullied me to the core for a long time. Even before I wore this outfit, they had already made comments about it and made me feel like it wouldn’t look good.
But this time, I decided to be creative. I styled myself in mint green and yellow traditional wear, finished with my traditional head tie. When I finally put it on, I looked stunning.
I cried my eyes out, I realised how much their voices had affected the way I saw myself.
And then they went quiet, they didn’t compliment me. They didn’t say anything.
That silence was one of the hardest, and healthiest, moments of my life. It was the moment I decided I was done. I cut them off.
But I also decided I would not become them. I would never play the same game they had played with other women.
Instead, I chose to build and support a community of creative women learning to embrace themselves, without needing to know their full stories to give them room to shine.
A moment I seized, I didn’t lose the fight. I simply stopped fighting their game.
Janet Adebayo
Acrylic on Canvas
2025
61 x 122 cm; 24 x 48 in
Price: POA
We are one - Don't Hate Her to Be Her is a reflection on community, womanhood, and the complexity of how women support, or fail to support one another.This community of women is expected to lift each other, to see each other, to create space for each other to shine. Sometimes we are fortunate to find that community. Sometimes, it is otherwise.Do women who tear other women down exist? Yes. I don't blame them; I simply learn to recognise it and move away. Perhaps they were never taught to celebrate greatness, or perhaps they don't yet have what it takes to accommodate greatness.“But they kinda admire you.”This body of work sits in that tension, between admiration and resentment, visibility and vulnerability. We are one, don't hate her to be her. Celebrate her.
Janet Adebayo
Acrylic on Canvas
2024
61 x 61 cm; 24 x 24 in
Price: POA
Call Us Delusional explores the complicated intimacy between women, admiration, comparison, hurt, and healing. Two women lose themselves, literally, talking about the same person. Both aching, both are caught in a story centered around a man who was never truly present for either of them. The work begins with pain, chest pain, scrolling, obsession and ends with accountability and grace: "Girl, I didn't know he was your guy. Nice to meet you."It asks: What if we turned the gaze away from him and towards each other? What if the hours we spent painting together mattered more than the nights he didn’t spend with either of us?This piece is not about him. It’s about choosing sisterhood over suspicion.
Janet Adebayo
Acrylic on Canvas
2025
61 x 61 cm; 24 x 24 in
Price: POA
Seasons in the Sun is a work born from loss. It began as a personal piece for my brother, created on the days when grief feels heightened, when the absence feels loud. I thought we’d have a lifetime.But loss has also taught me about community. In seasons of sun and seasons of grief, we learn who sees us, who makes room for our pain, who lets us continue to shine while we mourn.This piece is about how love continues after loss, and how community, of women, of family, of chosen family, becomes the ground that holds us when everything shifts. It is a tribute to enduring presence: you were, you are, you remain.