This Nigerian-American Artist Uses Durags As His Medium

The 31-year-old artist has been working with durags for over six years now, sourcing and collecting them from various afro-centric beauty shops across New York City. As a result, what Akinbola can create is frequently tied to what he can find. “There are times when you’re working on a piece and you don’t have enough material, and you have to give up on that idea or let it develop into something else,” he shares. “But I need restrictions when I work. I think if there’s too many options, I get frozen. This has been a nice way for me to learn how to work with color.”

Akinbola’s creative preoccupation with the deceptively simple pieces of cloth stems from his personal experiences and history. A child of Nigerian immigrants, Akinbola spent the first part of his childhood growing up in Missouri. When he was a teenager, Akinbola and his family moved to Lagos, where his parents are originally from, for three years and then returned to America long-term. A sense of criss-crossing between two cultures has consequently shaped Akinbola and his work. “I think with how I look at materials, or things in general, is trying to pull things together that do not mix,” he says. 

For Akinbola, the durag is emblematic of his Nigerian-American identity. “As I started growing up, I began having a rite of passage as a Black boy in America,” the artist says. “No one knows if I’m Nigerian or Caribbean. I’m just Black. I think something about the durag… it kind of flattens identity in a sense. Once you put that durag on, you’re seen in a very American context. Your identity is masked.” Interestingly, Akinbola says, in his experience, durags seem to be uniquely popular among Black Americans. “They’re not used in too many communities outside of Black America,” he says. This is a critical part of their beauty and cultural importance to him. “There are not too many articles of clothing that you can say are explicitly Black. American Black, too.”