Diaspora Star | Richard Ayodeji Ikhide : Reimagining History Through Line and Spirit

Richard Ayodeji Ikhide stands out as one of the most intellectually grounded voices among Nigerian artists in the diaspora today. London-based but firmly rooted in his Nigerian heritage, Ikhide’s practice sits at the intersection of ancestry, imagination, and global cultural memory. His recent solo exhibition, Cosmic Memory, presented by Steve Turner, marks a significant milestone: his first exhibition in the United States and a clear statement of his evolving artistic vision.

Born in Nigeria in 1991, Ikhide’s early life was deeply shaped by family history and storytelling. He hails from Sabongida Ora in Edo State, a region historically linked to the Benin Empire. Raised in a large, multigenerational household in Lagos, he grew up listening to stories from his grandfather, a chief who emphasized pride in Edo identity and cultural continuity. That grounding in tradition, ritual, and oral history continues to echo through Ikhide’s work, even as it engages with global mythologies and modern abstraction.

Ikhide moved to England at the age of fourteen, a transition that introduced both opportunity and cultural dislocation. While the move was driven by his father’s desire for better education, it also forced Ikhide to confront the realities of being “the other” in a post-colonial society. Rather than dilute his identity, the experience sharpened it. He remains unequivocal about his Nigerian identity, while also embracing a broader Black diasporic consciousness shaped by life in Britain.

Art became Ikhide’s refuge early on. Though he struggled academically due to undiagnosed dyslexia, he showed a natural affinity for drawing and visual storytelling. In Nigeria, a supportive art teacher exposed him to traditional African techniques such as batik, woodcarving, and bronze casting, allowing the art room to become a rare space of confidence and clarity. Alongside this, comics, cartoons, anime, and documentaries about ancient civilizations fed his imagination, planting the seeds for a practice that would later merge history, myth, and speculation.

His formal training began at Central Saint Martins, where he earned a BA in Textile Design in 2014. Initially drawn to fashion, Ikhide gradually became more interested in textiles as a visual and conceptual medium rather than a commercial product. This tension came to a head after graduation, when brief internships revealed the limits of client-driven design. A defining moment arrived when he quit a role that required repetitive decorative drawing, choosing instead the uncertainty of an independent artistic path.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWK97-j5WyM

That reinvention took shape at The Royal Drawing School, where Ikhide completed a Postgraduate Diploma in 2017. There, his practice matured significantly. Immersed in European art history, life drawing, and close study of old master paintings and ancient objects, he refined his technical skills while deepening his conceptual concerns. The influence of William Blake proved especially important, reinforcing Ikhide’s belief in imagination, spirituality, and the artist’s role as a builder of mythologies rather than a mere observer of reality.

Cosmic Memory encapsulates this evolution. The works combine figuration and abstraction, drawing from Nigerian heritage, ancient artifacts, and multiple cultural histories. Ikhide describes his process as intuitive, responding to absorbed knowledge and lived experience in order to collapse boundaries between past, present, and future. Pieces such as Contemplating with Effigies and AWÓN OŚERE explore sacred objects, ancestral roles, and the societal function of artists across civilizations, while others imagine future selves through the lens of historical imagery.

As a diaspora artist, Richard Ayodeji Ikhide represents a generation that refuses simple categorization. His work is neither nostalgic nor purely contemporary; it is speculative, spiritual, and intellectually ambitious. By treating drawing and painting as tools for accessing the collective unconscious, Ikhide positions himself not just as a chronicler of identity, but as an architect of cultural memory, one whose voice continues to gain resonance far beyond Nigeria and the UK.