Faith Be My Wings
September 17–October 24, 2026


Picture Theory is pleased to present a soloexhibition of new paintings by Obi Agwam. Drawing from journal entries, conversations, and moments of introspection, Agwam begins with a recurring question: “If this memory were a person, what would it look like?”

Agwam’s visual language brings together American cartooning, African American imagery, and traditions of figurative painting. Exaggerated features, graphic forms, and the visual shorthand of animation reflect his longstanding interest in cartoons, particularly in the representation of
Black figures within popular culture. Drawing from this vocabulary, Agwam constructs a cast of fictional subjects whose forms shift between
the familiar and the invented.

Across the paintings, figures are distilled through gesture, expression, color, and line. References to animation are removed from their original contexts and translated through the material and compositional language of painting. Agwam’s subjects remain distinctly character-like while operating within the conventions of portraiture, creating a tension between  caricature and likeness, fiction and representation.

 

Obi Agwam (b. 1999, Lagos, Nigeria) is a New York-based figurative painter whose work explores fantasy, nostalgia, and emotional vulnerability. Beginning with personal writings and moments of introspection, Agwam constructs imagined subjects from memory and reflection. His work is guided by a recurring question: “If this memory were a person, what would it look like?”

Agwam draws from a visual lexicon that brings together African American imagery, Western animation, and popular cultural iconography. His longstanding interest in cartoons—and particularly the ways Black figures have been represented within them—informs his approach to portraiture. Borrowing from and reworking these visual conventions, Agwam creates fictional subjects that reflect his interest in the Black artist’s ability to construct and control their own narratives.

Through portraiture, Agwam considers the range of ways Black identity can be imagined and represented. Central to his practice is a belief in imagination as a precursor to self-actualization: that envisioning alternative possibilities can itself become an act of agency.

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Obi Agwam received his BFA in Painting from the Fashion Institute of Technology in 2022. He was the 2025–26 Starr Fellow at the Royal Academy of Arts, London. His work has been exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts, Harkawik, James Fuentes, New Image Art, 1969 Gallery, Regular Normal and is held in the collections of the Rubell Museum and the Royal Academy of Arts.