Oluwasemilore Delano, born 1998 in Lagos, Nigeria, is an artist working between Lagos and London. Her practice uses drawing as a tool for propositioning, “Questions have always come easier to me than answers and in many ways, my practice follows this same reasoning. Questions hold a space of errant time and phenomena to move, with the potential to play with any desired response...my (current) question is what is a Black rainbow?”

Delano’s work explores ideas of lineage, family archive, citational practices, and Black ontology. Coming from an Architecture undergraduate at Cambridge University, Delano’s work is heavily invested in understanding how Nigerian imaginaries, Black spatial consciousness, events and conditions manifest within the mediums of charcoal, concrete, oil, black interfaces, textures and objects. During her studies, she received the provost prize for her artistic contributions to the university and became the first student to be exhibited in the Kettles Yard Gallery, Cambridge.

Concrete is a difficult material, it is tough and unyielding once set, and its strength tends to increase with time - charcoal is a remnant of burning, it holds that heat in its urgent application nevertheless its marks are easily lost. It is in the tension between material properties that Delano finds and proposes her practice of questioning.

Her work was exhibited at the Tate Britain London, Life between Islands opening event, in 2021 and was collected to be included in the archive of the Royal Drawing School as a record of study. Delano was awarded the Black Academic Futures Scholarship for her MFA from the University of Oxford and the Penny Freer Scholarship from Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. She is the recipient of the ORB Summer 2024 art prize sponsored by Sotheby’s and was shortlisted for the RBA Rising Star Award 2024.