# Project Description

Gambit

Tireni Adeniji

Summary

Final work

Tireni Adeniji (b. 2004, London) is a painter and multidisciplinary artist of Nigerian heritage whose work explores heritage, identity, and liberation. Rooted in portraiture, her practice reflects on the experience of navigating the world as a young Black woman, examining how identity is shaped, represented, and contested in contemporary society. Combining technical precision with layered meaning, Tireni’s work creates space for dialogue around race, gender, and culture. Her paintings are both personal and political, inviting audiences to reflect on belonging, visibility, and the complexities of the human condition.

Tireni Adeniji (b. 2004, London) is a painter and multidisciplinary artist of Nigerian heritage w...

College Central Saint Martins

Course BA (Hons) Architecture

Graduation year 2025

“Gambit” (2025) by Tireni Adeniji explores the fragile yet sacred bond between Black mothers and their children, framed through Yoruba symbolism and the strategic structure of chess. Using oil paint and pastel on canvas, the work reflects on cultural inheritance, sacrifice, and survival within the diaspora. The crowned mother, embodying ancestral wisdom, and the child, carrying symbols of pawnhood and potential power, together highlight tensions between tradition and assimilation. Adeniji’s painting asks what is lost, protected, and transformed when identity itself becomes a strategic exchange in systems of power

Final work

Gambit

Share this project

“Gambit” (2025) by Tireni Adeniji explores the fragile yet sacred bond between Black mothers and their children, framed through Yoruba symbolism and the strategic structure of chess. Using oil paint and pastel on canvas, the work reflects on ...

A link to this page has been added to your clipboard