© Ruby Okoro
“I’m trying to blend together the world of my imagination and my actual visual experience”
Ruby Okoro is a Nigerian visual artist, born in the Enugu State and raised in Rome and Lagos. Completely self-taught, Ruby first explored his love of vibrant colour and grand composition in his painting. He started to take photographs with his Cannon 650D resulting in arrangements of closely studied solitary figures in huge red sun-lit skies, black oil seas or landscapes of natural textures such as sand or giant purple plants. Okoro is fascinated by the skin of the people he sees around him in the streets of Lagos who he then transposes to exquisitely composed almost hyper-real scenes. Okoro’s work juxtaposes an eye for ordinary – such as a child sitting on a wall with a school satchel or a boy carrying bags of found plastic to create extraordinary and iconic images with dramatic and hyper-real light and colours.
Nigerian art and fashion takes inspiration from many places, urgently pushing the boundaries of what is considered ‘fashionable’ by looking at the mundane from a very different perspective. Ruby’s daring portraiture reflects this creative atmosphere of non-conformity as he takes his inspiration from the street, the hairdressers, the marketplace, and village festivals along with the stunning natural beauty of the Nigerian landscape, seas and skies.