Nigerian-American Victor Ekpuk ranks 1st in The People’s Artist 2026
For more than three decades, Nigerian-American artist Victor Ekpuk has used lines, marks, and ancient Nsibidi symbols to explore identity, memory, politics, and the African experience. He has spent most of his life turning these symbols into stories.
The journey has now brought him to the verge of a major international spotlight, as he currently ranks first in his group in The People’s Artist 2026 competition presented by Johnny Depp.
The winner will receive $25,000, appear in Artforum Magazine, and exhibit at The Art of Elysium’s Salon in Los Angeles. Voting for the Top 20 closes on May 14 at 7 PM PDT. The competition is organised by Colossal, as a fundraiser for The Art of Elysium, a nonprofit that brings creative programs to people facing hardship.
“My work exists between historical tradition and modern abstraction,” he says. “I reduce forms and ideas into their basic lines. Nsibidi informs my style of abstraction.” The visual language has carried his work across continents.
Ekpuk was born in Eket, Akwa Ibom State, in 1964, but the roots of his work stretch much further back. Nsibidi, which is at the centre of his art, is an ancient system of symbols historically used among the Ejagham, Ibibio, Efik, and Igbo peoples.
Rather than simply recreating those symbols, Ekpuk reshapes them into something contemporary, part language, part memory, part abstraction. Before galleries and museums began collecting his art, Ekpuk was already using symbols as a quiet form of resistance.
During Nigeria’s military era, he worked as an illustrator and often embedded coded imagery into newspaper illustrations to communicate ideas beyond censorship. Over the years, his work has appeared in institutions including the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, the World Bank collection, and the Havana Biennial.
“Victor Ekpuk’s work carries a reminder that African writing systems were ways of preserving identity, memory, spirituality, and human experience,” said Oral Ofori, founder of TheAfricanDream Consultancy.
“Sometimes history returns through stories. Sometimes it returns through symbols, fabrics, markings, and patterns that seem to carry meaning even before we fully understand them,” he added.
For Ekpuk, this competition is about what visibility can make possible. If he wins the $25,000 prize, he plans to expand his studio, support further cultural research travels, and mentor younger Nigerian artists through his foundation.
“I create art to meditate on the human condition,” he says. That idea runs through much of his work. His paintings often deal with identity, cultural memory, gender, migration, and politics, themes that feel deeply personal yet speak to broader human experiences.
Even after decades of international recognition, Ekpuk’s work continues to evolve. His recent portraits, including Anwan Obong (Chief’s Wife), Eyen Ekoi (Ekoi Girl), and Ancestor Ballad, draw inspiration from Ibibio masks and puppetry while placing them inside bold, contemporary compositions.
In some works, he incorporates Dutch wax-print fabrics into the faces and figures themselves, referencing the layered history of African identity and global influence.
Later this year, on October 5, 2025, Ekpuk received the Margaret Herz Demant African Art Award at the Detroit Institute of Arts. He is also scheduled to deliver a lecture titled Looking Back and Forward: A Dialogue with Memory and Identity.
From newspaper offices in military-era Lagos to the possibility of appearing in Artforum, Ekpuk has spent years proving that African symbols are still capable of evolving, adapting, and speaking to the present.
Source: TheAfricanDream.co
