Caroline Chinakwe at the Affordable Art Fair with one of her pieces, Within This Space. Photo by Ron Vester.
WANDERING AROUND the labyrinthine Affordable Art Fair on Hampstead Heath over the weekend [MAY 11] trying to take in the hundreds of art works on display from all around the world, it was great to see some by an artist who lives just down the road in Belsize Park, Caroline Chinakwe.
Her gorgeously flamboyant pieces were hard to miss with their in-your-face colour and dazzle, inspired, she tells me, by her Nigerian roots and the likes of style icons Erykah Badu and Grace Jones. She describes herself as a mixed media Afro pop artist.
This her third outing at the art fair as part of a showcase by Camden Black Creatives, Caroline has just wrapped up a six-month residency at the Langham in Portland Place, where her work graced the walls of TV prize-winning chef Dom Taylor’s pop-up Caribbean restaurant, the Good Front Room. No wonder, she’s smiling, I hear the place was packed out every night. Next stop is the Museum of London Docklands, where she’s become the first artist to receive a commission. Her two pieces, due to be launched in August, is on the theme of what it means to be a black Londoner.
So what art school did she go to? None it turns out. “I’m self-taught. The only time I learnt art formally was at GCSE level and I hated it,” she laughs. Her background is in the fashion industry where she worked as a designer for 20 years before abandoning it in 2019, fed up with its superficiality and treatment of black models. “I wanted to create images that reflected me and I spent a year working on my techniques. I put the results out on social media and to my amazement people got back to me saying they loved my art. It was social media that turned me into an artist, something I love being.”
An alumnus of the former Quinton Kynaston secondary school, Caroline works from Proposition Studios in Chalk Farm Rd alongside other members of Camden Black Creatives, an organisation she has been championing for years. If you want to view her work there, email her on hello@carolinechinakwe to book an appointment.
This article first appear in the Camden New Journal diary page on May 16, 2024
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