INVESTEC Cape Town Art Fair

Afeez Onakoya (born in Ogun State, 1997) is a Lagos-based figurative artist working primarily with charcoal. A graduate of Yaba College of Education, his practice centres on the human body as a site of connection, movement, and collective presence.

His figures are bold and dynamic, often depicted in communal, interlocked stances that draw on the physical language of Yoruba dance and spirituality. These compositions speak to intimacy, ritual, and shared experience, positioning the body not as an isolated subject but as part of a wider social and emotional structure.

Onakoya approaches the figure as a vessel for memory, rhythm, and shared presence, using movement and proximity to explore how individuals are shaped by one another. His visual language draws from a range of influences, including traditional Nigerian artefacts and classical Greek and Roman sculptural forms, which inform his treatment of anatomy, gesture, and corporeal weight.

His works frequently exist within vivid, liminal spaces defined by solid, saturated colour fields, heightening the physicality of the forms while foregrounding the precision and control of his charcoal technique. The tension between the softness of charcoal and the intensity of colour allows the figures to feel both grounded and suspended — intimate yet monumental.

Through this approach, Onakoya explores themes of community, resilience, and human interdependence, resisting narrative literalism in favour of sustained looking and emotional proximity.

He has participated in curated group exhibitions and fairs in Nigeria and the UK.

Roisin Jones (b. London, UK) is an interdisciplinary artist working across performance, video, installation, photography, sculpture, and archival research. Her practice explores how the body and memory function as living archives, preserving personal and collective histories. By examining cycles of care, transformation, and resilience, Jones’s work reflects on identity, belonging, and cultural memory. Through this exploration, she seeks to offer pathways for connection while confronting displacement and healing within communities. Embracing love as a radical act of resistance and restoration, she crafts narratives that invite audiences to engage with vulnerability, empathy, and hope.

Rooted in her British-Caribbean heritage and experiences within the diaspora, Jones’s work navigates the fluidity of identity and belonging. She weaves together folklore, symbolism, spirituality, and storytelling, using her art as a medium to honor the complexity of cultural identity. By drawing from ancestral memory and mythological motifs, she creates immersive worlds that bridge personal narratives with collective histories, celebrating the transformative power of storytelling.

Through a nuanced blend of personal narrative and historical context, Jones creates layered, multidimensional works that challenge conventional storytelling. Her practice is deeply informed by archival research, material experimentation, and performance, allowing her to explore the intersections of identity, memory, and transformation.

Yanma Fofana (b. 1999, Paris; lives and works in France) creates paintings rooted in family intimacy and the fragility of memory. Drawing from archives and daily life, her canvases capture suspended moments through processes of layering, erasure, and reworking.

Fofana has exhibited at the Museum of the History of Immigration (Paris), Modern Animals Gallery (Zurich), and Otis College of Art and Design (Los Angeles). Recipient of the Rose Taupin Dora Bianka Painting Prize and Bredin-Prat creation grant, she has also completed residencies at the Academy of Fine Arts (Vienna) and the Château de la Haute Borde.

Her chromatic worlds-violet, brown, and aqueous tones-render the intimate monumental. Everyday gestures and objects become symbols of heritage and lineage, transforming personal memory into universal meditation on presence, absence, and lived time.