Osinachi (Nigerian, b. 1991), born Prince Jacon Osinachi Igwe,,makes intricate figurative digital collages entirely inside Microsoft Word, layering shapes and textures inspired by Nigerian fabrics into scenes about identity, sexuality and protest.,Self-taught, Osinachi is based in Lagos and has worked this way for more than fifteen years.
Osinachi grew up in Aba, in southern Nigeria, first writing poetry and short stories, then illustrating those manuscripts on Microsoft Word following an introduction to computers from Osinachi's father around 2006.,Osinachi spent about a decade studying English Language and Library Science at the University of Nigeria in Nsukka, then worked there as an academic librarian before moving to Lagos to focus on art.In 2018 Osinachi began showing work in the Ethereum crypto art scene, becoming the first Nigerian artist to exhibit at New York's Ethereal Summit.,In 2020 Kate Vass Galerie in Zurich became the first gallery to give Osinachi a solo show, “Existence as Protest”.,Osinachi's 2021 series Different Shades of Water, five works reworking David Hockney's pool paintings around the Black body and leisure, was shown at the 1-54 African Art Fair in London and then became the first NFTs by a contemporary African artist offered at Christie's Europe.,
Osinachi has been credited with helping establish the 10 percent secondary-royalty standard across NFT platforms, after delisting work from a marketplace that set artist royalties below that figure.Osinachi is a core instigator of AfrofutureDAO, a platform helping African museums monetize, document and build community around their archives through Web3, and in 2022 curated Africa Here, an accelerator that onboarded more than seventy African-born artists to the marketplace MakersPlace.In 2023 Osinachi became the inaugural digital artist-in-residence at the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio, experimenting there with stained glass and completing Abitt: The Second Renaissance is Coming, later sold through Christie's during Art Basel Miami.,Osinachi's work is held in the collections of the Toledo Museum of Art, the Buffalo AKG Art Museum and the Museum of Crypto Art, and a postcard by Osinachi was included in the Museum of Modern Art's Postcard project.In 2024 Unit London released Forgotten Relics, a set of three screenprints imagining a future where technology and nature collide, and in 2025 Kate Vass Galerie presented Osinachi's solo show “Iconoclast” during Art Basel Week in Basel.,
