Crucked Smile, 2022

Makama John  

As eye-catching as intriguing, Makama John's portraits are irrevocably in tune with the creative bubbling of Africa. From his studio located in Abuja (Nigeria), the self-taught artist delivers a powerful body of works. Giving the viewer an intimate atmosphere, his creations are marked by blazing colours, brilliantly put in contrast to enhance his subjects whose unchanging gazes are filled with unwavering confidence and poise. The aesthetic signature he developed with the green polka-dotted skin gives all the uniqueness to his representations, thus recognizable from miles away. If the young Nigerian always had a pencil or a paintbrush in his hand since childhood, he decided to wear the hat of a full-time artist three years ago. A pivotal decision that marked the beginning of an exciting chapter and made him a promising artist whose name is now on the lips of art collectors from all around the world.

With portraiture, Makama John explores a way to (re)take and retain control over the image, and therefore the perception, of the individuals who make up the multilayered cultural here and now of Africa. His work can be seen in the same vein as Amoako Boafo, Annan Affotey or Kehinde Wiley – from whom one can recognize the busy backgrounds –, artists who have greatly inspired his work. However, distinctness quickly became a crucial thing for the young painter who decided to cultivate a bold visual signature: sharp-eyed individuals represented with emerald green skin covered with black polka dots.

An unusual, yet brilliantly exploited, choice of pigment that John explains as coming from childhood memories when, growing up on his grandparents' farm, green would fill his daily visual environment. “It's the green we find on the farmland, everywhere it's always green during the rainy season. It is memories of me helping my granddad. I realized that with green, I could represent agriculture, growth, prosperity." Having grown up close to outdoors and vegetation also explains the recurrent insertion of botany in his works. 

One can see it as a poetic way to embody the ongoing bond that unites us to nature, our life cycle being not so different from that of the elements of nature; the same intricate rhythm of life that sees us born, grow, reproduce, wither and die just as flora. As for the black dots covering his subjects – who are mostly John's close friends – they symbolize all the individuals who, singularly, make up Africa's plurality.