Indelibl moves to showcase African arts to worldwide audience

Indelibl, an e-commerce platform dedicated to promoting works by African artists, bringing them in contact with worldwide audiences, and ensuring commercial appreciation of their works has made its debut.

Among other things, the platform founded by Edwin Otta and Adetayo Jinadu, would also strive to make works by African artists will get more traction around the world, in addition to making them more accessible to audiences of all backgrounds.

The platform, which aims to empower African artists features a range of products, from original pieces of art to prints, t-shirts and books, and customers are able to purchase original artworks, as well as, other related items directly from emerging artists.

Besides being on a mission to make art more accessible in line with its vision to promote it as a lifestyle, the platform also gives its users exclusive access to exhibitions, book launches, film-screenings and other creative events.

According to its founders, there is a growing demand for works by African arts and creative works. The biggest auction houses, from London to New York, such as Sotheby’s and Bonhams, have units dedicated to developing and promoting both contemporary and antique African art works. Works of artists such as El Anatsui, Ben Enwonwu, amongst several others, are selling at record-breaking prices, paving the way for younger artists to follow. Platforms like Indelibl will avail these artists a worldwide audience and commercial appreciation of their works.

The value of the online market for works of art will be nearly ₦1.3trillion (US$6.3billion) by 2019, according to projects Hiscox Online Art Trade Report 2015, and the duo maintain that Indelibl aims to be part of this huge market by putting unique African voices on the spotlight and allowing their narratives to reach audiences from all over the world.

“We offer our artists the opportunity to sell and promote their pieces to a niche audience. Indelibl also proposes affordable premium quality content to its customers and ensures that they have a personalised experience through a social interaction with the artists and their art works.

“Following the launch of our social commerce platform, our next focus would be on building our offline community. By carefully curating live experiences, we will be launching a fresh and exciting series of events celebrating our community,” said Otta, who also doubles as the chief executive officer.