Slawn Couldn’t Care Less If You Hate His Art

“Do you sell Slawn works?” In March 2022, the staff at Saatchi Yates’s front desk heard this question again and again as, over several days, hundreds of visitors came in repeating this same question. Staff were baffled: The gallery, after all, had never worked with, or heard of, the artist before. This guerilla marketing ploy came from artist Olaolu Slawn, known simply as Slawn, who had cheekily posted on Instagram telling his thousands of followers they could find his work at the London gallery. Suffice it to say, the stunt caught the gallery off guard, but undeniably, it put the artist on the gallery directors’ radars.

Two years later, Slawn, now 23, is opening his debut solo exhibition at Saatchi Yates, “Slawn: 1,000 Canvases.” Running until October 20th, the show features 1,000 brightly painted A4-sized works, each featuring a spray-painted face and priced at £1,000 ($1,300). Meanwhile, the artist’s new body of larger works is rife with provocative imagery—from caricatures of KKK gatherings in OKKK (all works 2024) to a Simpsons-esque female figure set against the American flag in American Ice. The show makes it clear that he isn’t interested in playing by the rules, through the irreverence of both his work and his persona. At the buzzy opening, where the large crowd of gallerygoers spilled onto the street, he even stepped outside to paint a parked car.

“The 1,000 canvases are not meant to be quick art,” Slawn told Artsy over the phone (he was on his way to “Barbie®: The Exhibition” at the Design Museum). “It’s meant to be a moment in time…like, ‘Look, at this point in his career, this is where you were.’ It’s a story for people to tell, not some beautiful piece of artwork that some tortured artist made—that’s just corny, man.”

From Lagos to London

Born in 2000 in Lagos, Slawn started making designs for Nigeria’s first skate brand, Waffesncream, though he always vehemently resisted the label of an artist. In fact, he still rejects the title. “I never saw it as art,” Slawn said. “I just saw it as I’m making something, and that’s why I don’t call myself an artist because I feel it’s disrespectful to people that go to school and learn how to do it…I just did it because I kept doing it, and it made me feel safe,” he added.

These early days at the skate shop culminated in Motherlan, an apparel brand he co-founded with friends, which caught the attention of the late streetwear icon Virgil Abloh. Slawn moved to London in 2018 and enrolled at Middlesex University to study graphic design the following year, but his time there was brief—just one day. “On that one day, I learned one thing, and then shortly after, I got kicked out.” The one thing was important, however: “It was repetition—having a style,” he said.

He took that lesson to heart. During the lockdown in 2020, Slawn began to paint, populating his works with a recurring face that played with racist blackface caricatures. This signature image became a hallmark of his style, seen in works like Three Arthurs, which features three such figures in suits or across each of the 1,000 colorful canvases at Saatchi Yates. “I say this in the most honest way, that is all I know how to draw,” he confessed.

Slawn sells himself—his own way

After begging Abloh—whom he calls “V”—for a job several times, Slawn remembers that the designer gave him a straightforward yet transformative piece of advice: “Just sell your shit. Just sell yourself.” Inspired, he and his girlfriend, Tallula Christie—the mother of his two children—began to market his work on Instagram. These early works culminated in his first Louis Vuitton commission and a solo exhibition at Truman Brewery in London’s East End, both in 2021.

Now a father of two sons—a newborn and a two-year-old—Slawn finds time increasingly precious. His girlfriend and their family operate Beaubeaus Cafe in East London, named after their older son, Beau. Working from his studio near Caledonian Road, he focuses on his art to “stay out of trouble,” as he puts it.

Slawn’s interest lies less in the art itself and more in the reactions it provokes. He recalled an incident where people wanted the same artwork, prompting him to host a “fight club” for it in his studio. “You can even fight me for an art piece if you want,” he said. “I’m going to get two important art dealers to fight one day, I promise,” he added.

Embracing the love-hate reaction