The subjects of Luke Agada’s paintings exist in a liminal state, as if in a waking dream. Treading the line between figurative and abstract, corporeal and ethereal, his spectral forms occupy a kind of third space—much like their creator, who left Lagos, Nigeria, in 2021 to attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. “When you leave your home, your culture, your friends and move to the other side of the world, you are there physically, yes, but emotionally you are somewhere in between,” Agada says, describing the émigré’s feelings of displacement, discomfiture and disorientation. “Overlapping realities of time and space, past and present—my paintings reflect these hyphenated identities.”
The artist also led something of a double life in Lagos, where he was trained as a veterinarian but felt pulled toward painting. “I knew I needed to leave in order to deepen my artistic foundation,” Agada says. As he adjusted to his move, he delved into books about the often-surreal immigrant experience. His oil paintings, with their disembodied figures and enigmatic interiors, explore the struggle of trying to define oneself as a stranger in a strange land.
When working, Agada is guided by a mental image and a mood board, which includes personal photos alongside images of pieces by such painters as Gorky, Bacon, Rembrandt and de Kooning. His choice of colors, which he mixes himself, are firmly rooted in Nigeria. “My color palette feels like home to me,” Agada says, describing the dominant shades of ochre, saffron and steel. “The spectrum of colors in Lagos are these deep, rich hues—slightly sunburnt.” After priming his canvas with gesso, the artist works layer by layer, painting, wiping with a cloth and moving paint around the surface with a dry brush.
Since receiving his Master of Fine Arts last year, Agada has been in almost constant motion. His work was recently shown at the London 1-54 art fair, and he will have pieces at Art Basel Miami—through both Roberts Projects and Monique Meloche Gallery—in December.
As he spends more time in Chicago, Agada expects his paintings to reflect his shifting relationship with past and present. “When you move to a new place, you keep questioning what home really is—what it looks like and what it means to you,” he says. “This concept of home changes over time, and I expect that to evolve through my work as well.”
Artist Luke Agada references photographs, other artworks and his own drawings while creating his surrealist paintings.
