Richard Ayodeji Ikhide’s Aspects of Self considers mythology as a living psychological and imaginative structure through which we continue to understand ourselves. Drawing on Yoruba mythologies, Jungian psychology, ancestral knowledge and an expansive constellation of visual references, Ikhide constructs worlds where the personal and the archetypal, and the inherited and the imagined, exist simultaneously.
For Ikhide, myth is not something confined to the distant past. His engagement with Carl Jung’s ideas of the archetype and collective unconscious, in parallel with Joseph Campbell’s contemplations around the hero and the individual odyssey, has led him to consider myth as a language through which psychological states and modern day concerns can be manifested and perhaps answers found. The individual becomes the protagonist of an unfolding mythology, moving through transformative states, uncertainty, loss, renewal and rebirth. In Aspects of Self, this unfolds through a sequence of connected images, with recurring figures, colours and motifs creating a sense of continuity while leaving the narrative open to the viewer’s own interpretation.
The figures within Ikhide’s paintings inhabit this space between character and archetype. They are protagonists, ancestors, avatars and aspects of the self, moving through richly constructed worlds populated by vessels, effigies, masks, animal forms, and other symbolic totems, sometimes feeling votive, other times referential. The artist has previously described related figures as the Guild of Makers: a community of artists, musicians and artisans engaged in acts of creation, each representing different psychological states and different aspects of himself. The Gilded Craftsman extends this idea as a figure who makes, protects and carries culture forward.
Making becomes, in this sense, an act of cultural continuity. Ikhide’s fascination with ancient artefacts is rooted in the knowledge that the maker is often unknown while the object survives, carrying traces of a civilisation, its beliefs and its imaginative potential across generations. The act of making itself becomes a form of alchemy: the transformation of something from nothing, and a means through which the artist can engage with the divine, ancestral and otherworldly.
Yoruba mythologies and ancestral imagery sit alongside Renaissance painting, ancient objects, religious imagery, Japanese manga, comics and contemporary visual culture. Ikhide does not treat these references as fixed histories. Instead, he brings them into dialogue, allowing their symbols and visual languages to migrate across time and acquire new meanings. His use of speech bubbles and a panelling system introduces the conventions of comics into the paintings, creating connections between different traditions of image-making while allowing figures to move beyond the frames that contain them.
This process has become increasingly personal. His recent work has been shaped by experiences of adulthood and fatherhood, and by questions of inheritance, responsibility and continuity. The family becomes a site through which these concerns are explored, with images of mothers, fathers and children considering the transmission of knowledge between generations, alongside questions of paternal and maternal roles, the responsibilities of the first-born and the relationship between masculine and feminine
Aspects of Self ultimately asks what it means to live mythically now. If myth once provided structures through which human beings understood their place in the world, Ikhide suggests that we continue to require such narratives. We make worlds in order to locate ourselves within them; we become protagonists in stories shaped by what we inherit, what we experience and what we choose to create.
The Gilded Craftsman embodies this proposition: the maker as protagonist, custodian and world-builder, carrying fragments of the past into an uncertain future. In Ikhide’s mythology, the self is never singular or fixed.
Richard Ayodeji Ikhide (b. 1991, Lagos) lives and works in London. His work has been presented internationally, including exhibitions and presentations with Victoria Miro, Candice Madey, Zabludowicz Collection, V.O Curations and Steve Turner. His work is held in the collection of the Royal Collection Trust.