Digital colour and African futurity: Osinachi

Osinachi stands at the forefront of contemporary digital art in Africa, crafting a distinctive visual language that merges cultural commentary, identity exploration, and digital materiality through works created entirely with Microsoft Word, a medium he subverts to challenge notions of high art and technological gatekeeping; based in Nigeria, Osinachi's practice engages with both traditional West African aesthetics and global pop culture, situating his figures—often androgynous, poised, and introspective—within brightly coloured, patterned environments that recall textiles, Afrofuturism, and queer poetics; his art operates within the expanded space of the crypto and NFT ecosystems, making him one of the first African artists to gain significant recognition in the digital art market, while also using that visibility to critique exclusionary structures within both African and Western art institutions; key works like The Red Man series or his homage to Manet’s Olympia reframe canonical Western art through a postcolonial, digital gaze, inserting Black bodies and African perspectives into dialogues historically dominated by Eurocentric narratives; an emblematic moment in his trajectory was the 2021 sale of his NFT artworks at Christie’s and SuperRare, marking a rupture in how African artists are valued and accessed globally; through his innovative use of everyday software and strategic navigation of blockchain spaces, Osinachi not only expands the definitions of digital and contemporary African art, but also challenges the boundaries of authorship, materiality, and artistic legitimacy in the 21st century.