IMMANUEL OBANI
Cover Story

Carrying Heritage Into Afrofuturist Portraiture

Acrylic, charcoal, and digital media, built into portraits that pull adire indigo, Akan goldweight, and mudcloth geometry into everyday Black life.

Practice Painting · Drawing · Digital
Focus Afrofuturist Portraiture
Rooted In West African Heritage
Based Bradford, UK

Selected Works

Plates 01 — 04
Beyond the Gaze
Plate 01 — Latest

Beyond the Gaze

Portraiture that looks past the surface of how Black subjects are usually seen.

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Pulse of Progress
Plate 02

Pulse of Progress

Humanity, nature, and sustainable development held in a single frame.

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Where roots remember
Plate 03

Where roots remember

Ancestry and memory, held in soil, branch, and skin.

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The Bloom That Chose Its Own Colour
Plate 04

The Bloom That Chose Its Own Colour

Colour and form worked into a single, self-possessed image.

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Shop

Originals & Prints — Enquire
Beyond the Gaze

Beyond the Gaze

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Pulse of Progress

Pulse of Progress

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Where roots remember

Where roots remember

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The Bloom That Chose Its Own Colour

The Bloom That Chose Its Own Colour

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Publications

5 Entries
Critic's Review — P.M. News · 12 Jul 2026

A Critic's Review of Vessel of Memory: Reimagining Heritage as a Living Responsibility

Okechukwu Uwaezuoke on how the painting reframes heritage as something carried and reshaped rather than preserved untouched.

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Deep Dive — Independent Nigeria · 19 Mar 2026

Deep Dive Into "Where Roots Remember": Poetic Reflection on Identity, Memory, Living Archive of Ancestry

Yemi Adebisi on how the painting merges portraiture and landscape to argue that identity is cultivated, not just inherited.

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Feature — Bradford Telegraph & Argus

Major Art Exhibition Launch, Part of BAFA 2026

Coverage of the BAFA 2026 exhibition launch, using this work with consent — neither the image credit nor the artist's name appears in the piece.

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Critical Analysis — P.M. News · 3 Nov 2025

A Critical Analysis of Listening to Light

Yinka Olatunbosun on stillness as a radical act of engagement, read through a solitary figure beneath an ancient tree.

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Press — The Guardian Nigeria · 22 May 2025

"The Pulse of Progress" Reimagines Development Through Nature's Living Body

Gregory Austin Nwakunor on the painting's central image — a glowing heart nourishing a tree grown into the shape of Africa.

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Immanuel Obani

About the Artist

Immanuel Obani, professionally known as Immanuel The Artist, is a Bradford-based visual artist working across acrylic, charcoal, and digital illustration. His practice explores Afrofuturism, diaspora identity, memory, and cultural healing, carrying West African visual heritage — adire indigo, Akan goldweight, mudcloth geometry — into contemporary portraiture.

His work moves between painted surface and digital layer, using each medium's own texture — the grain of charcoal, the flatness of digital colour, the weight of acrylic — as part of what the image says. His pieces have been reviewed and featured across Nigerian and UK arts press, and shown as part of the Bradford African Festival of Arts (BAFA).