Nigerian artist Ayotunde Afolayan will bring his painting, Amongst, to the 2026 Atlanta Art Fair, taking place October 1–4 at Pullman Yards. Paul Conliffe will present the work at Booth D23.
Amongst centres on a young woman standing within a densely packed crowd, her gaze meeting the viewer directly while the figures around her look elsewhere, past the frame, downward, or into the middle distance. She is dressed in a deep blue coat and a richly patterned gold, purple, and blue scarf with woven fringe, her clothing rendered in far greater saturation and detail than the muted greys, greens and browns worn by those surrounding her. The effect is immediate: even fully enclosed by the group, she reads as singular, almost lit from within.
The clothing throughout the composition, fedoras, cloche hats, waistcoats and wool overcoats, evokes an earlier era, lending the painting a documentary quality, as though it were drawn from an archival photograph of a gathering, a march or a public assembly. That historical atmosphere gives weight to the painting's central question: how does a person hold onto individuality while embedded in a collective?
Afolayan frames the concept plainly, describing his subject as "surrounded, yet distinctly present." It's an idea that the painting explores formally as well as thematically, through colour contrast, the singular direct gaze and the careful, almost tactile rendering of the scarf's pattern against the flatter, shadow-darkened faces of the crowd.
Rather than functioning as passive scenery, the surrounding figures become active participants in the work's meaning. Their clothing, posture and averted expressions build the social environment against which the central figure's presence is defined.
Amongst joins a broader conversation in contemporary figurative painting about visibility and belonging, and what it means to be part of a group without being subsumed by it.
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