Eniwaye Oluwaseyi 2025 Winner of Rijksakademie Open Studios

Zidoun-Bossuyt Gallery is thrilled to announce that Eniwaye Oluwaseyi has been awarded the 2025 Royal Award for Modern Painting, presented by King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands, during the Rijksakademie Open Studios, following his presentation titled It is terrible to forever remain in between.

Eniwaye Oluwaseyi’s work explores identity, belonging, and memory through deeply personal paintings—many featuring himself for the first time. Created between Nigeria and the Netherlands, the series reflects the feeling of living “in between” two homes. Symbolic elements, like unreachable fruit or a spider web, evoke themes of disconnection, time, and longing. Though rooted in personal experience, the works carry social and political weight. Oluwaseyi doesn’t offer answers—he shares an honest expression of complexity, pride, and pain.

Eniwaye Oluwaseyi was born in 1994 in Kwara, Nigeria, where he currently lives and works. In 2018 he obtained a B.Eng. in Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering at the University of Ilorin, Nigeria. His work is part of the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), Miami, FL and the Xiao Museum of Rizhao, China collections as well as the Espacio 23, within the Jorge M. Pérez Collection’s group exhibition WITNESS: Afro perspectives. Eniwaye Oluwaseyi’s work is currently exposed at the BOZAR, Brussels as part of the group exhibition When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Painting, with artists of the calibre of Akinola Lasekan, Kehinde Wiley, Michael Amitage, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Lynette Yiadom-Boaky and Amy Sherald, conceived and organized by Zeitz MOCAA and following the exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Basel. He is currently attending the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, Netherlands for a residency. Eniwaye Oluwaseyi is the 2025 winner of the Royal Award for Modern Painting, presented by King Willem-Alexander of The Netherlands and is represented by Zidoun-Bossuyt Gallery.