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Studio Of Mode Debuts

By Tobi Awodipe
13 June 2015   |   2:37 am
Drawing heavily on her Nigerian origins and fusing her roots of Abeokuta and Lagos, Modebolu Aderinokun describes herself as a creative multidimensional artist.
Aderinokun, Studio Of Mode

Aderinokun, Studio Of Mode

Drawing heavily on her Nigerian origins and fusing her roots of Abeokuta and Lagos, Modebolu Aderinokun describes herself as a creative multidimensional artist.

Born in Lagos, Nigeria, schooling in Lagos, Togo and Surrey, England, she finally settled at the Academy of Arts University, San Francisco, U.S., to study animation.

Mode credits her stay in San Francisco as the main reason she decided to become an artist, “as being constantly surrounded by art daily really inspired me to start painting again, because I dropped it a while back as I didn’t see it as a possible career path”.

After a brief stint working at the Cartoon Arts Museum in San Francisco, she decided to actively pursue her dream of becoming an artist and so she made the decision to move back to Lagos.

Her company, Studio of Mode, which she founded in 2012, was a fulfillment of a long-held dream and to create a space where creative voices with various skills could be clearly held and understood.

She further describes it as a place where creativity connects and integrates into modern day society in an expressive, intellectual manner, without necessarily losing one’s creative aesthetic.

Starting out from a bedroom before evolving into the studio it is today, with her work being in the hands of hundreds of people, Mode insists that she is still inspired by the art of creation and the act of creating things and credits Freda Kahlo as her primary source of inspiration.

The new gallery and store, located in the serene Parkview Estate, Ikoyi, Lagos, will be launched today, Sunday, June 14. She dedicates it to her late father, Mr. Olutayo Aderinokun whom she describes as a lover and patron of the arts.

In the design of her gallery, which is inspired by the city of Lagos, she brings her artistic form to the fore, by efficiently fusing the two, sharp extremes of the city: its pristine white beauty and the other undesirable half. The outside area is white and bright.

On exploring further, one encounters dynamic colours and materials that have been used to evoke the feeling of being in a typical ‘Lagos space’.

Within the gallery, you are enveloped by two separate spaces, the ‘Abeokuta’ and the ‘Indigo’ space. The Abeokuta space is transition into a different world and arose from the artist’s need to not replicate the typical white space that is used in galleries in the Western world.

Believing that art should form part of everyday life, instead of something strictly to be admired, she insists that white spaces create distance and she prefers the art to be an intimate experience between the viewer and the work.

The terra cotta warmth evokes the earthy feeling of Abeokuta and brings warmth to the space, while the rough walls creates a feeling, truly, of ‘under a rock’.

The Indigo room is a reminder of Lagos, as its cool blue walls brings calmness to the eye, creating balance. The counterbalancing of the terra-cotta warmth and the Indigo’s coolness is the artist’s way of expressing her own neutrality that is achieved using white walls.

Apart from prints, the store boasts of a myriad of accessories and items created from some of the original art displayed in the gallery.

Mode, who is deeply inspired by creation, describes her homecoming as ‘hard’, but she insists it only inspires her artistic nature even more.

According to her, in order to attain fulfillment, one must create something that enriches other’s lives and when something that fills a void is created, society becomes healthier.

One must search deep within, to create something unique. With her soul poured into her expressive art, Mode believes she is doing just that. Her works can be viewed at studioofmode.com.

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