Fidelis Ayuwa Amed Izekor JR (b.2001 in Ologbo, Nigeria; lives and works in New York, NY) is a multimedia artist best recognized for his oil paintings and drawings, which explore the profoundness of identity through portraiture to further examine different ways of visual storytelling. Interested in civics and afro-futuristic fashion aesthetics, Fidelis Izekor merges the techniques of old western oil painting/drawing with ancient and contemporary African artmaking to cultivate a new form of image creation. This way of developing imagery derives from looking closely at how oil paint is built up to mimic realistic imagery while paying attention to the abstract nature of marks and shapes through the understanding of West African forms of abstraction, especially in textiles. By blending the homogeneity of patterning with high-level details of realism, Fidelis Izekor creates compositions that question and re-interpret what a portrait could look like. His work references pop culture and art history, as well as his own life - being born in Nigeria and moving as a child to the South Bronx, where he was raised. His experience in both places is a recurrent theme in his work and, for Fidelis, the construction of his figures is a means of representing a person's individuality and personal nature in an honest and raw way, even when those ways are rooted in fantasy and imagination. Though the representation of the self has been a prime focus for his practice, he has also explored depictions of landscape, poetry, nature and architecture.