Osaru Obaseki

Biography

Osaru Obaseki is a Nigerian multi-disciplinary visual artist and independent cultural entrepreneur. Osaru is a fellow of the ITP-International Training Programme with the British Museum; a member of the British Art Network and has exhibited with Rele gallery, Saboart Advisory & Amar Singh Gallery, Eclectica Gallery and AKKA Project – to mention a few. She is an alumnus of the Edo Global Art Foundation (EGAF), and has worked as an independent artist and culture entrepreneur since late 2022.

As a full-time studio artist, Osaru spends most of her time creating works across different mediums while collaborating with galleries and art institutions, such as museums and art foundations. Osaru uses painting, sculpture, media and installation to delve into the realms of materiality, history, cultural identity, societal dynamics as well as the intricacies of colonial and post-colonial narratives. With a distinctive approach, she melds sand (earth) and acrylic – stringing two distinct epochs – the ancient and the modern. Her artistic repertoire extends to the domain of bronze casting and glass casting where she masterfully channels the storied heritage of this ancient technique to bring innovative contemporary forms of art.

Osaru’s work has been featured in numerous exhibitions, including: Africa Basel, Switzerland (2025); Horniman Museum, UK (2024); Glasstress -Berengo studios, Murano, Italy (2024); ICCROM General assembly, Rome (2023); AKKA project, Venice, Italy (2023); Young contemporaries- National Museum Lagos, Nigeria (2020); Re-entanglement Project, Benin, Nigeria (2020). She has been featured in various media publications and documentaries like the New York Times, BBC Pidgin, Document Women, DW documentary, French/German TV ARTE.

In 2024, Osaru collaborated with the Horniman Museum on a new display of its Benin Kingdom collection. Over the course of this collaboration, Osaru spent a three week residency with the Horniman – during which she created a contemporary bronze sculpture titled Ame / Oyevbamen ‘Like Water’ to complement the returned artefacts. The piece is currently on display alongside the returned objects and is intended to offer new narratives on restitution and reparation, and The Horniman also produced a video documenting Osaru’s work.

More recently on November 8th 2025, as part of the opening of the Black Muse Art Festival in Benin City by the renowned artist Victor Ehikhamenor; Osaru showed a sculptural diptych titled Coat of Many Lines, which was displayed on a plinth in the form of an anthill. The anthill form was not merely aesthetic, but deeply symbolic – it situates the sculptures within a continuum of ecological and ancestral labour. Anthills are architectural testaments to collaboration, persistence and transformation – qualities that mirror Osaru’s engagement with materiality and memory.

Osaru is currently completing and installation titled Armored, which will be showing as part of the upcoming exhibition Back to Benin: New Art, Ancient Legacy in collaboration with Museum De Fundatie in Zwolle, Netherlands. This exhibition will be opening on the 21st February 2026.

In 2025, Osaru was interviewed by Michael Kolawole for Culture Custodian. Within this article, Osaru describes her work as about asking questions – who we are, where we are now, and where we are going – establishing a dialogue between eras, and allowing for ancient narratives to take shape in modern forms.

At the British Museum
During her time on the International Training Programme, Osaru was based in the Department of Africa, Oceania and the Americas and her partner placement was spent at Glasgow Museums.

In 2021 participants were asked to plan and propose a temporary exhibition on the theme of journeys, drawing on their existing museum experience and the skills learnt during the programme.  Osaru worked with Mario Tuki (Rapa Nui) and Haneen Mukho (Palestine) on her Object in focus project. Their exhibition proposal was titled Deciphering the Ba-Bird.

Osaru’s place on the ITP was generously supported by The de Laszlo Foundation.