Idris Olabode is a Lagos-based ceramic and glass artist whose work lives in the space between silence and speech, between scars and healing. His practice draws from traditional African visual culture, particularly Yoruba identity, and integrates elements of scarification, mental health, and poetic expression.
He speaks of what is often left unsaid through his pottery practice: the inherited weight of memory, the beauty in resilience, and the spiritual architecture of the self. Through the surface of his pots and portraits, he carves stories of mental health, identity, and inner conflict — using color not just decoratively, but symbolically, as a language of self-expression and emotional states. Every shade he applies is intentional: a feeling, a signal, a reflection of something within.
His art is not only about form but about awareness — the act of seeing oneself and allowing others to see too. He treats clay and glass as tools for healing, crafting objects that hold space for the stories we carry but often do not speak. He believes that in the stillness of a pot, there can be a scream. And sometimes, in its color, a quiet kind of hope.
