BIOGRAPHY
Ojo Agi is a Nigerian-Canadian artist, researcher, and educator whose practice centers visuality as a site for healing, community building, and social justice. Her practice is rooted in a critical awareness of how intersecting systems of power shape our lives, bodies, and wellness. Her multidisciplinary practice explores cultural hybridity, migration, displacement and health inequities for Afro-diasporic peoples, with particular attention to the ways in which we can reclaim a sense of agency and empowerment through image-making and storytelling. Known best for her figurative drawings on brown paper, she centers the emotional well-being of Black subjects to create a visual archive that affirms care and tenderness as antidotes to racial and gender oppression. Her minimalist drawings are intentionally rendered with detailed, delicate marks and striking, emotive value contrast to reflect the softness and power of her subjects.
Ojo has exhibited across Canada and the United States, curated with Art Gallery of Ontario and Feminist Art Collective, published in C Magazine and Herizons, and taught interdisciplinary drawing courses at OCAD University. She holds a BHSc in Health Sciences from the University of Ottawa and an MA in Women and Gender Studies from the University of Toronto. She is currently completing her PhD in Art History at Concordia University.
Installation of “Daughters of Diaspora” (2014-2018), photographed by Aaron Clarke for Toned Magazine (2023).
Installation view of “There Is Space For You Here” (2021), part of the group exhibition “The Chorus Is Speaking” at Campbell River Art Gallery in British Columbia. Photograph courtesy of Campbell River Art Gallery (2022).