"Having lived in four different cities up until the age of seven, and then moving to a different continent, and then three different cities within the UK - all my works are in ways reflections of various guises of myself. All these places have resonated with me for different reasons. Placing different images next to each other to build a narrative and tell a story - it's a way for all my different selves to be together and live in one place"
Tobi Alexandra Falade is a Nigerian British visual artist creating figurative oil paintings engaging with narratives of modern Black British life and dialogues of African and post-colonial contexts. The compositions for her large oil paintings are created by collaging and manipulating photography of Nigeria from family albums, and her own present-day photography to draw these two different worlds together and construct new narratives.
Falade frequently uses herself as a model within her artworks to explore narratives of identity and self. Her term 'shadow self', refers to a version of herself that she imagines has continued living on in Nigeria even after she was physically divorced from her country of origin, she thinks of this version as her 'Other' and explores this subject in a bronze mask casted from her face bearing the same title. Her distinctive manipulation of materials and the techniques she uses to approach these themes and subjects, allows her to join worlds together.