Oluseye is a Nigerian-Canadian artist. Born in London in 1986, the artist spent his childhood years in Lagos, Nigeria before moving to Canada.

Using “diasporic debris” — a term he coined to describe the artifacts, discarded materials and found objects he collects from his trans-Atlantic travels — Oluseye explores Black being across themes. These transformational objects are recast into sculpture, performance and photography. Their explorations invoke Oluseye’s personal narratives and travels within a broader examination of Black and Diasporic cultures, migration and spiritual traditions. The talismans in his Eminado series physically trace and embody the transgenerational movement of the Black diaspora.

Across his practice, he embraces the notion of Blackness as divine, fluid and unfixed; unbound by time, space, and geographies. As such his work blends the ancestral with the contemporary, the traditional with the modern, the physical with the spiritual, the new with the old and the past with the future.

Oluseye has a Bachelor of Commerce from McGill University, Montreal, and a Master of Science in Entrepreneurship from Bayes Business School, London, UK. He has exhibited at the Albright-Knox Museum, Buffalo (2022), Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto (2021), Agnes Etherington Art Center, Queen’s University, Kingston (2021) and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (2015). His first public art commission, Black Ark, installed in Toronto’s Ashbridges Bay Park, explores Canada’s role in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Oluseye was an artist-in-residence at the GUILD Residency in Cape Town in early 2023, and has presented his work with Southern Guild at the Investec Cape Town Art Fair and Expo Chicago.