Artist of the day: October 2025

Friday, October 31, 2025

Artist of the Day, October 31, 2025 : Igi Lola Ayedun, a Brazilian emerging multimedia artist (#2406)

Recognized for her chameleonic approach to art, Igi Lola Ayedun is deeply engaged in mobilizing young audiences and fostering cultural awareness through contemporary art.

Igi Lola Ayedun is a multimedia artist and cultural organizer working across painting, video, 3D digital sculpture, photography, and sound, based between São Paulo and Paris. She is the founder and director of HOA, a nonprofit organization with a situationist influence dedicated to a decolonial perspective on contemporary art, focusing on artists from the global majority.

Her artistic research explores the cultural and biological significance of color, with a particular emphasis on blue. Investigating the global trade routes of indigo, the historical legacy of lapis lazuli, and the transformative power of minerals, Ayedun reconstructs life cycles through materiality and visual translations of her dreams. She sees the fusion of ancestral and contemporary technologies as a spiritual method of preserving African heritage for the future. Igi Lola Ayedun's work also revisits textile traditions through the history of the Silk Road, exploring the intersections between ancient trade routes, material culture, and contemporary artistic practices.

With an extensive editorial career, Igi began her journey nearly 20 years ago in journalism and has been recognized by Visionaire (USA) as a prodigy of her generation, contributing to national and international publications such as Vogue, Elle, L'Officiel, Harper's Bazaar, O Estado de São Paulo, O Globo, Marie Claire, I-D Magazine, among others. Recently, Igi was named one of the 10 women currently leading the Brazilian art market by Folha de São Paulo.

During French President Emmanuel Macron's visit to Brazil in March 2023, Igi was selected as one of the leading Brazilian figures in culture, sports, and literature to attend a dinner with the French Head of State in São Paulo and participate in a consultative panel. She contributed to creating guidelines for the cross-season celebration of the Year of Brazil in France and the Year of France in Brazil, focusing on her dedicated engagement with youth culture.

Her artistic work has been exhibited at Pivô/IMS, winner of the ZUM Photography Prize from the Moreira Salles Institute, the MAR – Museum of Art of Rio de Janeiro, the MIS – Museum of Image and Sound, the Pinacoteca of São Paulo, Christie’s Rockefeller Plaza – New York, the Tomie Ohtake Institute, ETOPIA Center for Art and Technology – Zaragoza, Teatro Oficina, Itaú Cultural, among others. Ayedun is distinguished by her chameleonic professionalism, her ability to mobilize popular youth, and her dedicated work in raising cultural awareness among young people through contemporary art, creating opportunities and interactive experiences.

© 2025. All content on this blog is protected by international copyright laws All images are copyrighted © by Igi Lola Ayedun or assignee. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, the use of any image from this site is prohibited unless prior written permission is obtained. All images used for illustrative purposes only

Ms. Igi Lola Ayedun

pecado abaixo do sul do Equador, 2025

You are electricity, you are light, you are sound itself, you are flight, 2025

Você deságua em mim e eu oceano, 2025

Suyane, 2025

São Jorge, por favor, 2025

Grande Mãe, me proteja de tanto feitiço e tanta maldade em forma de coisas belas, 2025

Eu e você somos 3 imagens, me dê um pedaço seu para levantar o que é meu, 2025

Dentro de mim eu escondo um pássaro azul, 2025

Jejum II, 2024

Grande Mães, 2024

And risen once again. Sure feet!, 2024

To your soul, cry, 2023

Left a grave to admire And as we reach for the sky, 2023

Woman of colour y otros clichés, 2022

Vertigem, 2022

Not asking for your permission, please, understand, 2022

Untitled, 2021

Caminhos Para Cegueira II- Ultima Memória, 2021

Thursday, October 30, 2025

Artist of the Day, October 30, 2025 : George Johnson, a New Zealander painter [Constructivism] (#2405)

George Henry Johnson (1926 – 2021) was a New Zealand artist who made his name in Australia.

Johnson studied art under the emigre artist Theo Schoon, who confirmed an early commitment to modernist art, especially Geometric Abstraction. He graduated from Wellington Technical College in 1947.

Johnson took influence from Dutch De Stijl, otherwise known as Neoplasticism. This Dutch art movement was based around architecturally structured pieces, similar to how you may view many of Johnson's works. Growing up, this artistic influence was significant as it was at the height of its popularity during Johnson's most impressionable years.

Johnson relocated to Melbourne, Australia, in 1951 where he was soon drawn into contemporary art circles, mixing with Leonard French, Roger Kemp, Inge King, Julius Kane, Peter Graham, Clement Meadmore and others. He held his first solo exhibition there at the age of 30 in 1956, a selection of boldly geometric abstractions that set the art scene buzzing. By this time he was sharing a studio with French and the pair experienced increasing friction from the Heide Circle, a rival group of figurative modernists—including Arthur Boyd, John Perceval, Charles Blackman and Robert Dickerson—who were still trying to control the Contemporary Art Society. The latter artists eventually formed the Antipodeans Group, staging an exhibition in August 1959, initially to make a stand against Johnson, French, Kemp and a growing number of non-objectivist followers, although increasingly to express their opposition to American Abstract Expressionism, which they feared was about to overwhelm Australian art.

© 2025. All content on this blog is protected by international copyright laws All images are copyrighted © by George Johnson or assignee. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, the use of any image from this site is prohibited unless prior written permission is obtained. All images used for illustrative purposes only