Aaron Kudi

Artist Profile

Aaron Kudi (b. 1993, Bauchi, Nigeria). Lives and works in London.

Aaron Kudi is an abstract painter who works in liquid metal, industrial enamel and ink on large sheets of cotton duck and glazed tarpaulin. His paintings deal with endurance and faith, which he approaches through the behaviour of materials rather than through images.

Kudi paints on the floor. He pours enamel and liquid metal and lets gravity spread them: the enamel separates, forms a skin and cracks where the metal runs through it. Once the surface has dried, he works back into it by hand, removing material to draw out forms the pour has already made. Each work passes through repeated rounds of adding and removing. He also works on paper and on translucent tarpaulin, using transfer. His current body of work, The Garden, Empty After They’ve Left, takes the Garden of Gethsemane as its starting point. Recent paintings include The Dance of the Dryads (2025), measuring 170 by 220 centimetres, and Anthrakia (2026). The practice draws on Natural Synthesis, the approach developed by Uche Okeke and the Zaria Art Society, alongside the poured painting of the New York School and the abstraction of Frank Bowling and Howardena Pindell.

Kudi was raised between Bauchi, London and Devon. He studied psychology at University College London and first worked as a sculptor, assembling found objects, before turning to painting. In 2022 he installed paintings at sites across London during Frieze Week in the project If You Can’t See It, You Can’t Be It. He completed his MFA at the Slade School of Fine Art in 2026. That year Adegbola Gallery presented a solo booth of his work, To Carry My Cross, at 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, New York, and his work was included in This Must Be the Place at Whitechapel Gallery, London. He has undertaken residencies at the British School at Rome (2025) and the Vannucci Foundation, Città della Pieve (2026).