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Ololade Olawale

@ololade_wale

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visual artist

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They say a desert is a land kissed by scarcity. When I first got there, that’s exactly how it felt. I couldn’t drink enough water. The sun darkened my skin more than I thought possible. The wind was either too harsh or not there at all. Even trying to walk felt like the sand was fighting me. I honestly questioned why I was there and how anyone chose to live like that.

After a few days, something shifted. I stopped counting water bottles. I was fine wearing the same net singlet I left Abuja with. Even the junk food I struggled with started to feel enough. I looked around and saw communities full of life, bright colors, people laughing, raising livestock, cooking fresh food.

That’s the real story. Life is perceived, and survival sometimes is just a matter of perception. Bright hues can still be found in deserts.

#portraitphotography #fineartphotography #desert taken in Sahara Desert by @ololade_wale

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a year ago

Ojú Ọrun (Eyes of the Heavens)
A portrait series shaped by Yoruba spirituality and the quiet weight of cultural memory. It draws from the idea that the human form can hold presence beyond the physical; that posture, silence, and stillness can carry aṣẹ (spiritual authority) just as much as words or motion.
In Yoruba cosmology, Ọ̀run is the realm of ancestors, spirits, and unseen forces. These portraits are not meant to illustrate mythology but to reflect a kind of nearness to it, showing figures as vessels, grounded in their form yet open to the intangible. Their garments, beads, and gestures are not performative symbols, but visual languages passed down through generations, part of a larger spiritual code.
The work approaches the human body as a shrine, something sacred, composed, and attuned.
Not all that guides us can be named.
But it can be felt in breath, in cloth, in bearing.

Model: @3lvcksun
Fashion stylist: @3lvcksun
Hair stylist: @sty.ledbymeg

#surrealism #portraitphotography #yoruba #fineart taken in Heaven by @ololade_wale

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a year ago

The Dreamer’s Portrait

This work is a mirror held up to my own soul. For a long time, I have lived in the "in-between" like drifting on a quiet river, suspended between the person I am and the person I am destined to become. I have always felt that I have what it takes to bloom; I feel the seeds of greatness, of art, and of love stirring beneath the surface, yet for so long, it has only felt like a dream. It has felt like a vivid and beautiful but distant "someday."

As I look at this projection of my life, I am struck by a heartbreakingly beautiful irony. While I am hiding my face and waiting for a sign that my season has begun, the bloom is already happening on me and through me. The butterflies have already landed. The petals have already opened. The vibrant colors I’ve been searching for on the horizon are already woven into the fabric of my own being.

I realize now that I have been so focused on searching for a destination where I can finally flourish that I became oblivious to the garden I have been growing all along. This is an admission of my own blindness. It is a reminder that even when we feel we are just "waiting" in the middle of a lonely river, we are often already the most beautiful thing in the landscape.

Creative Director & Photographer: @ololade_wale
Muse: @thealbinoebubu
Fabric Design: @rukuhspetali

#fineartphotography #flowers #portraiture #fashionphotography taken in Nigeria, West Africa by @ololade_wale

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9 months ago

LAGOS, YOU’RE INVITED 🇳🇬🎬

We’re thrilled to share the first exclusive screening of the trailer for All Roads Lead to Lagos: The FESTAC ’77 Story, our upcoming documentary exploring the extraordinary gathering that brought thousands of artists, thinkers, performers, and cultural leaders from across Africa and the Black diaspora to Lagos in 1977.

Join us this Friday, October 2 at 5 PM at MUSON Centre for an exclusive first look, hosted by Lights, Camera, Africa Film Festival @lcafilmfest .

This film has been years in the making, and we’re so excited to finally begin sharing it with an audience. ❤️

📍 MUSON Centre, 8/9 Marina Road, Onikan, Lagos
🗓 Friday, October 2, 2026
⏰ 5 PM

Registration link in bio.
Come see where the story begins.

#FESTAC77 #FESTAC #nigerianfilm #lagos taken in The Muson Centre by @ololade_wale

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20 days ago

Day in the life taken in Gulf of Guinea by @ololade_wale

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23 days ago

Charm

Charm is defined as the gentle power to attract, delight, or influence through presence rather than force. It is a quiet kind of magnetism that draws attention naturally without demanding it. Charm does not rely on loudness or performance. Instead, it works subtly, shaping the atmosphere around it simply by existing.

It exists in ease and self assurance, in the calm authority of someone or something that has nothing left to prove and no need to compete for space. It is the point where growth is no longer something to manage or chase, but a settled reality. The tension of becoming fades, replaced by a steady sense of completeness.

At this level, presence alone is enough. It influences gently, almost invisibly, and is felt as much as it is seen. In its simplest form, charm is the quiet power of being fully at ease with what you already are.

Muse: @hellobma
Fabric Design: @rukuhspetali
Location: @ololadelog

#fineartphotography #flowers #lagosphotographer #fashionphotography taken in Nigeria, West Africa by @ololade_wale

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8 months ago

Soul Search

Sulaimon works hard as a labourer, and that kind of job doesn’t just tire your body. It wears down your mind too. Every day feels like a battle with long hours, heat, pressure, and still not enough money to show for it. He had been carrying this quiet heaviness for days, the kind you can’t really explain but you feel everywhere. Today it finally became too much. He couldn’t push through it anymore, so he walked away from work.

He didn’t go home. He went straight to the river because that’s the only place where his mind ever feels light. The moment he stepped into the water, something in him loosened. As he sank under, it felt like the world paused. No noise, no stress, no problems chasing him. The river didn’t judge him or ask anything of him. It just held him. In that quiet, he could finally breathe, even if only for a moment.

Sulaimon said, "If I can't wash it off in the water, the sadness will just follow me." And the truth is, sometimes life becomes too heavy for one person to carry. Sometimes, you need to run to the one place that doesn’t demand strength from you. For him, it’s the river, a simple stretch of water that lets him release what he can’t say out loud. A place where, even if it’s just for a few minutes, he can let the weight float away. taken in Lagos, Nigeria by @ololade_wale

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a year ago

Art would set you free.

#fineartphotography by @ololade_wale

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3 months ago

Fisherfolk

These photographs document a fishing community on the Gulf of Guinea, capturing their daily routines and the environment they work in. Their method is simple but demanding: nets are taken far into the sea and pulled back hours later by the villagers.

Even in the uncertainty of each catch, whether the net comes back full or nearly empty, their attitude remains the same. Humility. Resilience. Patience. These qualities shape how they co-exist, how they relate to the sea, and how they relate with outsiders.

This series presents a few excerpts from a larger body of work, showing the strength of a community whose life is closely tied to the shoreline and the tides. by @ololade_wale

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a year ago

Realms

#surrealism #prayer #faith by @ololade_wale

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2 years ago

Primordial Roots

We don’t bloom because everything suddenly becomes clear or because life finally hands us certainty on a silver platter. We bloom because we choose to believe in ourselves even when the ground feels unsteady and we are wading through a pool of doubt.

For long, I waited for belief to arrive fully formed, like a lightning-strike or maybe thunder itself, thinking that one day I would wake up ready but real growth rarely announces itself so loudly; it arrives in whispers, in the small, but brave acts of choosing ourselves again and again while we are still carrying a bagful of uncertainty.

Every time I paused to listen to my own voice amid the noise of doubt, every time I gently reminded myself “I am becoming,” I was watering invisible roots. The flowers we carry are not sudden miracles. They are proof of all the unseen nights of trusting the becoming. Here, no longer hoping, but knowing and trusting in myself now because I have seen what happens when I choose me anyway. The harvest is close. I can feel it stirring beneath my skin.

Creative Director & Photographer: @ololade_wale
Model: @xonasasaki
Fabric Design: @rukuhspetali
Location: @ololadelog

#fineartphotography #lagosphotographer taken in Nigeria, West Africa by @ololade_wale

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8 months ago

Echoes

2024 Archive

Quest

2024 Archive by @ololade_wale

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2 months ago