Anthony Azekwoh on Putting Nigerian Digital Art on the Map

Anthony Azekwoh

Against the backdrop of a mid-rise apartment building in Lagos, Nigeria, Anthony Azekwoh is outside on his balcony, not minding the sweltering heat as he needs a good internet spot to speak to me via Google Meet.

Azekwoh, 23, went from failing his visual arts class in high school and dropping out of Covenant University to being an acclaimed Nigerian digital artist with exhibitions in four countries in the four years since he became a professional artist.

Yasuke - a painting he made in 2020- is synonymous with Azekwoh's rise to success. The first Google image result for Japan's first black samurai is his painting which he titled Yasuke. In 2020, the painting went viral on X (FKA Twitter), garnering attention from Neil Gaiman, Matthew A. Cherry, and many other renowned creatives in the global art community.

Before this, Azekwoh had spent years through trial and error learning how to make art digitally. One such successful trial was The Red Man. Like oil on canvas, this piece of art stands out for its arresting red background and a finely drawn outline of a Black man with a cigarette hanging lazily from his mouth. Although the artwork was a practice piece, it led to social recognition and Azekwoh’s first major crypto art sold for 5.5 ETH ($25,000) on SuperRare in 2021.

The Red Man

A typical workday for the artist includes ticking off his chaotic to-do list. When he’s not in meetings, he’s sorting out prints, shipping items, planning, or attending events. The most tranquil time for drawing is at night when no distractions exist.

Before our interview, he got an email from DHL Nigeria announcing a surcharge increase due to Nigeria’s forex crisis. This 100% increment will affect his business overhead and is one of the many challenges Nigerian creatives experience daily, especially those that have international clients.

However, finding new ways to solve existing problems has been a part of his life since he was a 16-year-old with a writer’s mind, substituting a laptop for paper because of his bad handwriting. “These business issues caused by Nigeria’s economic policies are ever-changing. Everything blows up every week. Right now, it’s shipping. Next week, customs and prices. We have to find a new way to solve the problem; it's been very tricky” he says.

Community is an answer to some of these problems. Azekwoh takes calculated risks with a huge support system. Starting out, he reached out to many artists, both at home and abroad, asking them for advice and tips on how to improve his art and selling skills. Social media has been a great tool for him, helping him reach places and people he wouldn’t have met otherwise.

Most of his friendships were built on this foundation. Durotimi Bolaji-Idowu (Duro Arts), Morenike Olusanya (Renike), Chigozie Obi, and Mayowa Alabi (Shuta Bug) are some of his closest friends and collaborators today because of that, he explains. His strategy for having good collaborators is knowing who to ask, what to ask, and sometimes figuring out 20% of the problem before going back to ask for more information.

Illustrator and cover artist Bolaji-Idowu laughingly explains that although Azekwoh says his multiple DMs were unread, he didn’t see any. However, their first encounter at a podcast show left him intrigued.

“Our friendship started when we met at a podcast show. I saw a younger version of myself in him and was happy to give advice,” says Bolaji-Idowu, “In the early stages of my career, I and a few digital artists who were active had lots of ideas we couldn’t execute, based on constraints in Nigeria. But he’s been able to jump the hurdles and showed us that everything we thought impossible is possible.”

Azekwoh was keen to get as much support as he could because his parents were unsupportive of his art pursuits.

For years, their relationship was estranged and full of friction. After receiving an ultimatum in 2021 from his father to complete his final year of university or leave his family home, Azekwoh chose the latter. He preferred to pursue his art career instead, opting to stay alone and keep in touch with his siblings and parents occasionally through messages and phone calls.

His sister, Rita Azekwoh, recalls that even before the ultimatum their home was full of tension when her brother began university because he didn’t want to go to Covenant University.

“That was a weird time for my family. It was a sad phase. Everywhere and everyone was tense. He had the most pressure because he was in the centre of it,” she says, “Our parents will support anything you want to do as long as you do education first. My dad would have supported Anthony if he had finished university. I tried convincing [Anthony] to do what they wanted but he said he wasn’t happy. He believed in himself enough to drop out with no plans. That was a ballsy move. Eventually, our parents realised they made a mistake by not allowing him to choose what he wanted to study because they saw how it affected him.”

While that rift is now water under the bridge, with more frequent family gatherings and his younger sister working as his social media manager for Lewa Gallery, it was a key component of his dogged approach to succeed.

Now, merging his found (art) family with his real one gives him more room and flexibility to face challenges head-on. This is why giving back is important to him, and helping other artists grow has become a passion project.

Azekwoh believes the support he now has from his parents is due to the way he handled the conflict. “Right now, my parents are very supportive. There's been many opportunities and reasons to give up just because of how hard it is. But then they watch me climb over these obstacles, coming out on top. Yes, it’s very difficult. But for me, it's just also been the same old. I'm making things work, regardless of what comes my way,” he says.

Dealing with the grief of the unexpected deaths of a few close friends has also increased his zest for life and growth. His mission is to get things done as quickly as he can. An impatience he describes as a flaw.

Bolaji-Idowu remembers his first impression of Azekwoh as someone with an ambition to execute all his ideas immediately. This impatience led to stress he was concerned about. “Anthony was weighed down a lot by his need to get things done now. I’d watch and advise him to be patient. Patience is not his strong suit, so it took a while for him to heed my advice but I’m glad that he’s evolved from being stressed to becoming more relaxed.”

“I didn't come here by myself. I went to Whitesands. I met great teachers. I needed to go into the world and be able to give back. There've been many opportunities and reasons to give up because of how hard it is. I create a community by doing what I can because digital art is a very hard, unpredictable field, and we all need support,” he says.

Like any other artist, the threat of AI art is looming and not easily ignored. However, Azekwoh pacifies himself by acknowledging that the audience doesn’t care about the process, just the results.

People like good work, he says, whether it’s digital, traditional, AI-generated, or not. Everything is about results, and results are conversational.

“Everything I make is very new and from my own experience. AI doesn't have that context; it doesn't know what it feels,” says Azekwoh, “For instance, only a Nigerian who has felt how it feels to live in a place like this would be able to pass along that message.”

The AI art conversation reminds him of when everyone was scared of digital art, but the worries eventually went away. He believes NFTs, crypto art, and AI art have created necessary conversations that will keep people thinking and innovating ways to create and protect themselves while doing so.

Anthony Azekwoh’s “ÓWÀMBÉ” exhibition

When he started, he was denied access to exhibit his pieces at galleries and museums by curators who claimed that because he didn’t paint on canvas, he was not a real artist, despite going through the same drawing process as a traditional artist.

Proving naysayers wrong, Azekwoh’s painting, No Victor No Vanquished, is currently displayed at the Yemisi Shyllon Museum of Art. He’s done nine shows, two workshops, and four exhibitions in galleries and museums, including Nigeria's first digital museum, Discovery Museum.

With a desire to expand the reach and relevance of African digital artists, Azekwoh is currently building Lewa Gallery and has collaborated with other Nigerian digital artists to launch Lewa Marketplace.

The marketplace aims to connect artists with buying customers while eliminating the stress of international payments. Nigeria is infamous for making it hard for creatives and gig workers to receive payments without many bells and whistles, which can make it next to impossible to get cash in hand.

Besides doing what he can to create ease in business for artists like himself, Azekwoh looks forward to doing more writing. His future entails more growth, acceptance, and innovation, whether in the form of dance or singing. So long as he’s able to keep expressing and creating in any form, he’s happy.

Having created and printed 3D sculptures, and written multiple essays and short stories, his future ambition is unsurprising.

Azekwoh is calm and deliberate, and possesses an intentional spirit that will stop at nothing to achieve every level of success he envisages. “I've been able to understand and embrace what's happening with open arms,” he says as he squints into the sun, “I’m not going too hard, not sprinting too much. I’m getting better just because.”