Jadé Fadojutimi’s Trailblazing Approach to Abstraction Shines in Her First Solo Museum Show

Jadé Fadojutimi dreams in color. A saturated palette of cerulean blue, jungle greens, and pastel lavenders flourish among splashes of rich reds and pinks that spring from her looming abstract canvases. In an interview with British Vogue, Fadojutimi explained how she sees color as a “synesthesia of sorts” that allows us to explore mutable and nuanced identities.

“I’ve been thinking about a lot of what it means to talk about identity, or question it,” she said. “We are all colours that are constantly fluctuating, we change every day, we change every minute, and it was a wonderful thing to think about in terms of why these paintings feel so different to me all the time, because I am constantly changing, and the colours I am experiencing are constantly changing.”

Fadojutimi’s ever-changing moods and inspirations are on full display at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, where the artist’s first museum survey, “Yet, Another Pathetic Fallacy,” is currently on view. Consisting of 12 paintings that were commissioned specifically for the show—all created in 2021—the exhibition opened during Miami Art Week, allowing a global audience of art enthusiasts to immerse themselves in the work of this promising young artist. The exhibition also gives the museum an opportunity to create some much needed scholarship around Fadojutimi’s work.

“[Fadojutimi’s work] has garnered widespread recognition and popularity—the paintings are so generous and open and distinctive,” said ICA Miami artistic director and exhibition co-curator Alex Gartenfeld. “I think audiences are also drawn to the majestic color and line and sense of possibility.” He went on to explain that it is the museum’s role to give the work structure. “We work with Jadé to build the language around the work,” he continued. “We are actively training ourselves to look critically at what’s so compelling about these images.”

At just 27 years old, Fadojutimi is one of the most exciting young artists to emerge in recent years. Inspired by the vibrancy of Japanese fashion and anime culture—which manifests itself mostly in an abundance of color and freneticism—Fadojutimi’s works are notable for their size, scale, and dancelike use of gesture. She has been quickly gaining institutional success since her work was acquired by the Tate in London in 2019, making her the youngest artist in the storied museum’s collection. Gartenfeld makes it a point to note that the ICA Miami was the first museum to acquire her work, purchasing A point to pointlessness (2019) a mere four months before the Tate followed suit. Fadojutimi was featured in The Artsy Vanguard 2020.

Her show at the ICA Miami leaves little room for doubt about the artist’s trailblazing approach to abstraction. In the making since 2019, the canvases on view were largely made during COVID-19 lockdowns, with many created from her home studio in London. According to Gartenfeld, this isolation drove Fadojutimi to experiment with figuration, and many of the works within “Yet, Another Pathetic Fallacy” lean heavily into form. He points to An Unforgettable Psychosis, with its impressionistic color palette, as a sign that the artist went further toward the figurative in many of these canvases than in prior works.

“While these are abstract paintings, there is a live and dynamic tension with figuration that is the central pull of the work,” Gartenfeld said. “As a landscape, the works are windows into Jadé’s rich internal worlds.” While the works were being installed, Gartenfeld asked Fadojutimi why the paintings in this body of work were so figurative. “I had to imagine traveling somewhere,” the artist replied. “I’d make it myself because I couldn’t go anywhere.”