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Yusuf Durodola, Top Up

Multidisciplinary Artist

Yusuf Durodola

VerifiedPB-ID-000015
  • Multidisciplinary Artist
  • Performance Artist
  • Environmental Art Practitioner
  • Art Educator
  • Curator
  • Lead Facilitator
  • Workshop Director
  • Creative Director

Lagos, Nigeria

An artist working across painting, performance and discarded materials to explore culture, human behaviour and environmental consciousness.

In their words

“I am drawing attention to our disregard for our environment through our actions and inactions. We are the ones who littered our space and the space is going to give it back to us.”

New Telegraph, on the ÌRÀPADÀ exhibition ↗

Exhibitions

  • ÌRÀPADÀ
  • Recycled Matter
  • Because There Is No Planet B
  • New Gaze

Education

  • Master's degree in Studio Painting
  • Visual Arts
  • Fine Arts
  • Secondary education

Works (1)

Chapters

  • Abuja★Lead Facilitator / Workshop Director · Artist

Materials

  • discarded items
  • ink

Certificates

Profile

Who Yusuf Durodola is

Yusuf Durodola was born in 1979 in Ibadan, Oyo State, and works from Lagos. He is a multidisciplinary artist: a painter, performance artist and mixed-media artist who also works as a graphic designer, art educator and curator. He attended CAC Grammar School, studied Fine Arts at the Federal College of Education (Technical), Akoka, and read Visual Arts at the University of Lagos, Akoka. He holds a master's degree in Studio Painting from Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, for which he exhibited at the university's Department of Fine and Applied Art and produced the catalogue Traces. He lectures at the Federal College of Education (Technical), Akoka, has worked as an art educator since 2006, and mentors teenagers and emerging artists. He is creative director of DY Art Studio and founder and artistic director of the Artegun Foundation, an initiative to nurture the creativity of young artists. He curated the Artmiabo International Art Festival in 2023 and again in 2024, and is a Guinness World Record achiever for the Largest Painting by Number, produced for Ecole de Dessin, Lagos. His work with recovered material sits inside a wider practice rather than defining all of it. He is not only an environmental artist, and not every work he makes uses recycled material.

Practice

How the work is made

Medium
  • Painting
  • Mixed media
  • Installation
  • Graphic design
Technique
  • Performance
  • Public engagement
  • Assemblage from discarded material
  • Found-object work
Theme
  • Environmental pollution
  • Waste
  • Human behaviour
  • Social justice
  • Yoruba identity
  • Culture and festival
  • Socio-political conditions

Contribution

Beyond the studio

Work that does not appear in an exhibition list: institutions built, images put to public use, and time given to other people.

  1. Artegun Foundation

    Founder and artistic director. An initiative to nurture the creativity of young artists. Source ↗

  2. Artmiabo International Art Festival2023 to 2024

    Curator of the festival in 2023 and again in 2024. The 2024 edition, Sculptors Odyssey, ran from 29 April to 1 May at EbonyLife Place, Victoria Island, Lagos. Source ↗

  3. Federal College of Education (Technical), Akoka2006

    Lecturer in painting, and an art educator since 2006, mentoring teenagers and emerging artists.

  4. DY Art Studio

    Creative director.

  5. Publication, 20232023

    Traces, a catalogue of the works he exhibited at the Department of Fine and Applied Art, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, submitted for his master's degree in Studio Painting. Published by Integral Visuals Ltd, 85 pages. ISBN 978 978 780 714 9. Source ↗

  6. Guinness World Records

    Guinness World Record achiever for the Largest Painting by Number, produced for Ecole de Dessin, Lagos. Source ↗

  7.  

    Performance work that engages the public directly rather than treating a work as something that exists only in a gallery, drawing on Yoruba idiom, proverb and festival. One documented performance, Global Hues, was presented at the Federal College of Education and addressed education and the drawing out of human potential.

  8. Planet-B, Genesis Chapter2026

    Lead facilitator and workshop director of the Planet-B Genesis Chapter, Abuja. Led the performance Òdàlè Dà'lẹ̀ and exhibited Top Up.

Planet-B contribution

Top Up

Title
Top Up
Year
2026
Materials
discarded items, ink
Medium
Discarded items assemblage and ink on board
Chapter
Abuja
Artist
Yusuf Durodola
Open the full record ↗

Material

From discard to consciousness

Planet-B follows material as well as authorship. For work made to be performed and argued with, the route does not stop at the record: it ends in somebody looking at rubbish differently.

  1. 01

    Discard

    Something is thrown away. At that moment it has no value to anyone.

  2. 02

    Transformation

    It is worked into an object made on purpose. The material stays legible: you can still see what it was.

  3. 03

    Meaning

    The object carries a reference somebody recognises, from a proverb, a festival or a street they know.

  4. 04

    Conversation

    Shown or performed, it is argued with rather than only looked at. The audience is part of the work.

  5. 05

    Consciousness

    Somebody leaves seeing the same discarded thing differently. That is where the change starts.

The catalogue records this work’s material as discarded items. It does not record which specific object became which part of the piece, so the archive does not say.

Elsewhere

Selected documented works

Works recorded as part of Yusuf Durodola's wider practice. Planet-B does not hold these: they are listed so the Planet-B contribution can be read in the context of the practice it came from.

  • Ododo

    “Flower” in Yoruba. Discarded and recycled plastic, 18 × 16 in. Discarded plastic worked into the form of a flower.

  • Eleyinju Egbe #2

    2025

    Mixed media with discarded plastics, 12 × 10 in.

  • Hidden Treasure

    2025

    Mixed media with recycled keyboards, 12 × 10 in.

  • Garbage in Garbage Out

    2024

    Shown at ÌRÀPADÀ. On the consequences of environmental neglect returning to the society that caused it.

    Source ↗

Announced

Still ahead

Announced, not yet held. Listed separately from the exhibition record, which holds only what has actually taken place.

Promotional bill for the Artmiabo International Art Festival 2026, featuring Yusuf Durodola
Artmiabo International Art Festival / photograph by Benjamin Oladapo

  1. Artmiabo International Art Festival 20262026

    28 September to 1 October 2026, FCT Exhibition Pavilion, 900 Herbert Macaulay Way, opposite Radio House, beside the International Conference Centre, Central Business District, Abuja. Theme: African Art, Heritage and Legacy. Founded by Miabo Enyadike. Durodola is performing.

    Festival site ↗

Timeline

The dated record

Only points the archive can put a year to. Where a date is not established, the entry is in the profile above rather than invented here.

  1. 1979

    Born in Ibadan, Oyo State

  2. 2006

    Begins working as an art educatorTeaching and mentoring

  3. 2022

    Recycled Matter, Alexis Galleries, LagosGroup exhibition on environmental problems

  4. 2023

    Curates the Artmiabo International Art FestivalCurator again in 2024

  5. 2023

    Traces publishedCatalogue for his master's in Studio Painting, Obafemi Awolowo University

  6. 2024

    ÌRÀPADÀ, The Nike Art Gallery, AbujaSixteen works from recycled material, with performance

  7. 2026

    New Gaze, Belgian Residence, AbujaSolo exhibition, approximately 17 paintings

  8. 2026

    Planet-B Genesis Chapter, AbujaLead facilitator and workshop director; exhibited Top Up

The archive

Planet-B does not only preserve artworks. It preserves the people, the materials, the ideas and the circumstances that give those works meaning.

That is why this page holds more than a picture and a title. Yusuf Durodola’s contribution to Planet-B is one work in one chapter, and it was made by somebody with a career that reaches far outside it. The archive records both, keeps them clearly apart, and does not flatten one into the other.

Identity

Planet Passport

A permanent identifier for one person's contribution. It is not a profile and it is never a score: it exists so that a record can still be found, and checked, long after the people who made it have moved on.

Planet Passport
PB-ID-000015
Status
Verified, not yet claimed
Chapter
Abuja
Certificate
PB-ABJ-2026-016

Is this you?

This Passport is verified but has not been claimed. If it is yours, you can create a free account and claim it. A verifier reviews every claim by hand, and claiming it lets you add to your own record.

Claim this record

✓ Verify PB-ID-000015 independently ↗

Network

Others in this chapter

Artists whose work was exhibited in Abuja alongside this one. A shared chapter, which is not the same as a collaboration: the archive records who was present, and does not infer who worked with whom.

Verification

Profile sources

Where the statements on this page can be checked. An archive that describes a living person should show its working rather than ask to be believed.