‘Sunrisers’ is Tunji Adeniyi-Jones first lithograph. This large-scale, hand-drawn stone lithograph features abstract depictions of figures in small groups or pairs that are characteristic of the artist’s fluid, rhythmic compositions. These curving figures, that appear suspended in mid-motion, recall celebratory dancing and invokes the repetitive movement of ritualized ceremonial processes. Adeniyi-Jones’s broad range of references includes mythology, Yoruba culture, cubism, and pop art.

Sunrisers derives from twentieth-century West African art, including the work of Nigerian artists Bruce Onobrakpeya and Olu Amoda, and in particular Ben Enwonwu’s Negritude series, which explores the anti-colonial cultural and political ideology of the 1930s movement of the same name.

The artist, who was born in London to Nigerian parents and has lived in both the United Kingdom and the United States, often centers his work around notions of identity and views the body as a powerful vehicle for storytelling that transcends boundaries and borders.

'The figures in my work are expressions of my identity and there is something very rewarding about using the body as a vehicle for storytelling.' - Tunji Adeniyi-Jones