Multidisciplinary artist Ayomide Daniel explores the complexities of identity, cultural inheritance and emotional experience through a compelling body of figurative paintings that obscure as much as they reveal. In his upcoming solo exhibition Beyond Identity at upCYCLE LDN, Daniel presents anonymous portraits that occupy the space between personal introspection and collective experience, inviting viewers to question how we construct, conceal and communicate our sense of self in an increasingly materialistic, filtered and image-driven society.
Working with acrylic on wood and acrylic on canvas, Ayomide builds richly textured surfaces through layered mark-making, expressive colour and the deliberate accumulation of paint. His figures frequently appear with their faces concealed beneath draped fabric, transforming the traditional portrait into an investigation of presence and absence. In paintings including The Man, Hidden Depth, I’m Here, Kiana and Tony, anonymity becomes a powerful artistic device. The subjects might be self-portraits, representations of friends or imagined encounters with strangers, resisting fixed interpretations while suggesting the complexity of identities that remain perpetually in flux.
Although the portraits depict figures whose faces are obscured with material that has the texture of a woollen hat or back-to-front wig, these masks don’t appear to have the sinister connotations associated with a balaclava or hood. Ayomide’s use of a bright palette full of yellows, greens and blues evokes post-Impressionist Colorist Van Gogh, and his saturated colours combined with the relaxed poses of his sitters results in portraits that suggest innocent, youthful subjects searching for identity.
Ayomide’s visual language draws upon his Yoruba heritage, connecting contemporary questions of selfhood with the cultural traditions of his Nigerian ancestors. Within Yoruba culture, the concealment of the face through fabric and masks can carry profound spiritual significance. In Egungun masquerades, elaborate cloth coverings transform performers into embodiments of ancestral spirits, temporarily dissolving individual identity to establish a connection between the living and the ancestral realm. Daniel’s veiled figures evoke this cultural symbolism, suggesting that what lies beneath the surface extends beyond the individual towards histories, memories and inherited forms of belonging.
Ayomide’s paintings also recall Surrealism, particularly René Magritte’s seminal 1928 painting The Lovers, in which fabric obscures the faces of two figures locked in an intimate embrace. Like Magritte, Ayomide employs concealment to disrupt the viewer’s expectations, introducing ambiguity into otherwise recognisable human encounters. However, his anonymous portraits extend beyond Surrealist mystery, addressing the psychological and cultural pressures that shape contemporary identity.
In a society increasingly dominated by curated online personas, consumerism and the relentless circulation of idealised images, the obscured face becomes a pointed counterstatement to the demand for visibility. Ayomidechallenges the assumption that identity must be immediately legible, suggesting instead that the self is layered, contradictory and resistant to easy definition. His textured surfaces reinforce this idea: scraped, reworked and accumulated marks become visual metaphors for experiences that continually construct and reconstruct the individual.
Educated in Fine and Applied Art at Olabisi Onabanjo University and holding an MA in Fine Art from Middlesex University, London, Ayomide combines formal training with a commitment to artistic education and community engagement. Through his creative initiative, Ortus Expressions, he also seeks to support emerging artists and expand opportunities for visual storytelling.
Ultimately, Beyond Identity proposes that anonymity need not signify absence. Through the tension between concealment and revelation, Ayomide creates portraits that are simultaneously intimate and universal, rooted in Yoruba cultural memory yet responsive to the uncertainties of contemporary life. His paintings ask us to look beyond appearances and recognise identity not as a fixed image, but as an evolving negotiation between heritage, experience and the person we are still becoming.
Find more information and RSVP to a public viewing of Beyond Identity at upCYCLE LDN ON 1st November, 2026 here.
