EVOLVING LEGACIES

On the occasion of his first solo show in Asia, artist Tunji Adeniyi-Jones tells Tatler how he's forging his future from art history's forgotten legacies

- Aaina Bhargava

There was a time, as a fresh art graduate, that Tunji Adeniyi-Jones attempted to sell his artwork to his family members. He was not successful. "I went through that phase that every artist goes through at the start, where you're promoting yourself and throwing yourself out there, like a newspaper or something," the artist recalls. "Those were some really defeating moments, where you were like: sh*t, even my family aren't trying to buy my art.

"I'm talking about this like it was a really long time ago, but it wasn't; [it was just markedly different to now," the artist says, observing the starkly apparent changes in art education and the art world which have occurred in the eight years since the 30-year-old British Nigerian artist graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from The Ruskin School of Art at Oxford University. "Now you see a lot of students coming out of really good programmes and going straight into having support from collectors and opportunities to show their works," he says. "There seem to be more viable career options at the postgraduate level, but when I finished, I didn't feel like my programme prepped us for it."

Calls for more diversity and inclusivity in the teaching of art history, as well as in the making of exhibitions, and for more viable financial opportunities for young, emerging artists resulted in what Adeniyi-Jones felt were rapid changes in the US, but the reaction in the UK was much slower. Feeling a lack of resonance with and representation in his art history education prompted him to pursue his MFA at Yale University; being in the US meant he met more artists of colour and was exposed to a Black art history centred around largely African Americans, as well as Black British artists whose work has only recently been documented and taught as part of the mainstream.