Collins Obijiaku (b. 1995, Kaduna, Nigeria; based in Chicago, IL) is a painter whose practice explores how everyday experiences can serve as conduits for memory, connecting lived experience with personal and collective histories. Through his longstanding engagement with portraiture and the communities that shaped his upbringing, Obijiaku creates elegant studies of Black men and women who meet the gaze of the viewer, conveying both their individuality and their social context. For Obijiaku, home and place are inseparable from the experience of belonging, informing his portraits of individuals whose presence speaks to the cultural ties in which identity takes shape. Combining oil, acrylic and charcoal, he renders his figures with descriptive precision and atmospheric subtlety, employing soft gradients, rich textures and delicate linear details to establish a sense of intimacy and presence. Seen up close, these intricate markings unfold into a network of delicate pathways across his subjects’ faces, recalling the meandering contours of topographical maps and the organic striations of wood grain, while revealing the dimensionality and singular character of each feature.

Recent exhibitions include Dreaming in Colour, Opera Gallery, London, UK (2026); Two Boys, 12.26, Dallas, TX (2025); When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Painting, Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel, Switzerland (2024), Center for Fine Arts, Bozar, Brussels, Belgium (2025); Atlantic, Roberts Projects, Los Angeles, CA (2024); and Traces of Me, Luce Gallery, Turin, Italy (2023), among others. He was an artist-in-residence at Black Rock Senegal, a multidisciplinary residency program founded in 2019 by Kehinde Wiley in Dakar, Senegal, from 2020 to 2021. Obijiaku’s third solo exhibition with Roberts Projects, Wherever You Are, Remember Me, opens November 7, 2026.

Obijiaku’s works are represented in the permanent collections of the Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX, and the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA.