VILLAGER (b. A. Adekunle Adaranijo), they/them, is a Nigerian-born Contemporary Transdisciplinary Artist, Cultural Producer, and African Spirituality Practitioner. Moving across painting, collage, sculpture, performance, experimental film, installation, curation, and cultural facilitation, VILLAGER actively maps and queries the intersections of material memory & intelligence, Yorùbá knowledge systems, and postcolonial African identity as a dynamic topography of critical inquiry. VILLAGER's practice—deeply informed by their migration from Lagos, Nigeria, to the U.S. in 2013—traces the relational interplay between objects, bodies, and spaces, exploring how form, design, and content intersect to evoke experiential, spiritual, ancestral, and sensory possibilities, as well as elucidate social, cultural, and political resonances that transcend linear narratives.
About the Artist
VILLAGER is formally trained as a Water Microbiologist and Environmental Researcher, earning a B.S. in Environmental Chemistry from Towson University, stepping away from their Master's program in Marine Estuary Environmental Science at UMBC in 2022 to pursue a dedicated and directed studio practice. VILLAGER has been the subject of solo exhibitions–"Devotion, Dreams, and Destiny" at the Eubie Blake Cultural Center (2025), "(O)KAN: recent works by VILLAGER (2025) at Motor House Baltimore, ÀṢẸ: Embodying the Divine (2024) at Bromo Seltzer Arts Tower, and BUSH BOY! (2022) at Chesapeake Arts Center in Baltimore, MD. Their visual art practice continues to find resonance through group exhibitions both stateside and internationally including, Sou(l): Mostra de Arte Afro-Diaspórica, Artspace Vigidal, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Diasporic Crossing, Southside Contemporary, Richmond, VA, BLAQ SHEEP, Superchief Gallery LA, Los Angeles, CA, AFROFUTURISM: 100 years after the Harlem Renaissance, Papermill Playhouse, Millburn, NJ, B24 (Best in Baltimore) Artscape Exhibition, Riggs Gallery & Leidy Gallery (MICA), Baltimore, MD to name a few. VILLAGER's performance practice as "REGAL LIV" has garnered institutional commissions and invitations at The Peale Museum, THE ROUSE COMPANY FOUNDATION GALLERY, Creative Alliance, BlackRock Center for the Arts, and Maryland Art Place. Their artwork can be found in private art collections in Los Angeles, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and Rio de Janeiro. Beyond the studio, VILLAGER has presented lectures at Maryland Institute College of Art, Yale University, Towson University, and Morgan State University. In 2025, they also served as a Guest Teaching Artist for the Baltimore Museum of Art’s Art After Hours program, facilitating a drop-in art-making workshop in conjunction with the Amy Sherald: American Sublime exhibition. Their work has been featured in publications such as WBAL-TV, DGX Magazine, BmoreArt, the Baltimore Banner, and NUNAR, and has received several awards, including the Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award (2024) and, most recently, the Baltimore Mayor’s Office Individual Artist Award (2025). VILLAGER lives and works in Baltimore, MD, where they also curate and produce OJOKORO VILLAGE: a living altar of afropolitan objects and experiences for futuristic becoming.Artist's Statement
VILLAGER engages their work as a long intergenerational study which eclectically links traditional Yorùbá epistemologies, cosmologies, and ontologies with broader West/African spiritual technologies and philosophies across the diaspora. They employ ancestral, spiritual, anthropological, and material-based approaches to create devotional objects, works, and spaces that situate themselves within the contemporary as experimental activations of Afrodiasporic memory, meaning, and world-making for envisioning transformative pathways from the future-present-past.Featured Work
Photos
