Biography
Taiye Idahor Bio
Taiye Idahor was born and grew up in Lagos Nigeria. She studied Fine Art at the Yaba College of technology Lagos Nigeria where she graduated in 2007 with a Higher National Diploma (HND) in sculpture.
In the last few years Taiye Idahor has worked consistently and significantly within the concepts of identity and women using “hair” as a visual language in her work. Tangled through the issues of trade, beauty, the environment and globalisation, she examines how these factors build the woman’s identity including hers in today’s Africa but in particular Lagos Nigeria where she has lived most of her life.
The essence of her work may lie more within the process of creating the work than in their finished state. Idahor uses collage, drawing, sculpture and mixed media to contemplate these ideas through the lens of memory, culture and modernity. She seeks to explore the contradictions found with women, culture, modernity and power in today’s Africa, hence she uses objects, materials and forms that reference the African identity.
Her work embodies an absence through the voids and the empty spaces apparent in her collages but they only express the artist’s constant questioning on the issues she is exploring while leaving room for the audience to also contemplate them. Her frequent use of female faces even of her own is a direct confrontation to the issues surrounding women in Nigeria, their daily struggle with culture and tradition. In 2014 she had her first solo exhibition titled “Hairvolution” and it has now defined most of the work she makes till date.
Her work is included in the collections of the Zeitz MOCAA South Africa, Brooklyn Museum New York, Princeton University Art Museum and Davis museum, Wellesley college Massachusetts.
