Tag: Kip Omolade

Kip Omolade's "Diovadiova Chrome" portrait series brings out the striking qualities of the human face. The artist takes inspiration from African folk art forms such as the ivory masks of Benin and the Ife bronze heads of Nigeria. He considers his work a contemporary exploration of the mask as a conduit between mankind and the spirit world. For his updated take on this timeworn subject matter, Omilade makes plaster casts of models' faces and uses them to create resin sculptures, which he coats with chrome and embellishes with fake eyelashes. The masks serve as reference material for Omolade's hyperrealist oil paintings, which pay homage to African cultural traditions in a novel way.