Toni Akerele and the Pursuit of the Unseen

Between astrophysics, dream journals, Djing and painting, Toni Akerele keeps returning to things that cannot readily be seen—and to the question of how to put them on canvas. Okechukwu Uwaezuoke writes

“My art starts with poetry or my journal prompts because I believe it helps me understand all my emotions colourfully through words before they eventually meet the canvas.”

Somehow, this statement explains so much about Jesutoni “Toni” Akerele, weeks after meeting her at an evening gathering at the Civic Centre in Victoria Island, Lagos, on Friday, August 14. It was one of those select affairs billed as “art community building and wine tasting”, the sort of occasion seemingly designed for aficionados to mingle over wine and conversation. The ambience, just right for networking, provided a relaxed setting for a prolonged chat with the young woman who traipses between three seemingly different worlds—science, art and Djing. She seemed entirely in her element discussing art and a recent collaboration, even as the conversation wandered into more tangential territory.

Astrophysics, which she spent two years—from 2022 to 2024, precisely—studying at the University of Kent in Canterbury, UK, came first. And it burnished rather than distracted from her creative instincts. That may explain why she describes the subject, at heart, as “the science of probing the unknown”.

Then comes art. Art, she says, is her way of getting at much the same problem from another direction, her “attempt to define exactly that”. She adds: “Dreams are as undefined as it gets because there’s nothing to compare it to, that is, until the laws of astrophysics.”

It may seem an unlikely leap from astrophysics to dreams, but Akerele makes the connection quite naturally. Her brain, she says, has a habit of turning words into pictures.

“My brain translates words to images, so actively reading about science is where this intersection takes form.”

Dreams, too, are taken seriously. She pays attention to them and keeps a sketchbook or journal beside her pillow, hoping to catch whatever remains when she wakes.

“I also try to pay attention in my dreams. I always keep a sketchbook or my journal by my pillow so when I wake up, I try replicating it as vivid as I possibly recall. Hence why I remain careful about what I assimilate.”

It is a curious discipline for an artist whose interests already range across several territories. Before Kent, she had spent two years, from 2020 to 2022, at Oxbridge Tutorial College’s Ikeja GRA campus in Lagos.

Fast forward to April 28. The Lagos-based acrylic and oil-on-canvas painter and DJ was having her first solo exhibition, In Due Time, at The Vault Social House in Eti-Osa, Lekki. Dreams, isolation and the pursuit of something seemingly larger than oneself ran through the exhibition, which combined paintings with curated sounds and keepsake pieces.

The concerns were personal enough: self-discovery, love, friendship, personal clarity and the search for home.

“I believe you just know when you’re great and all that is between ‘knowing’ and ‘fulfillment’ is Time,” she says. “I spent a lot of time praying whilst creating In Due Time. Prayer is transcending and I genuinely can’t explain it in words, it’s just a feeling, more surreal than anything I’ve ever felt.”

For Akerele, words come before paint. Poetry and journal prompts are often the starting point. She writes with as much feeling as she can muster, letting an emotion have its full run before deciding whether it belongs on the canvas or should remain a lesson learnt. Some words, she has discovered, are visual in themselves—a reflection, she says, of how she is wired.

The scientist in her is never far off. Christianity, science, music and painting each have their place. Christianity is a way of life; science is practical knowledge; music is sonic art.

“I’m guided by its principles and it keeps me believing in a Power much greater than what I can imagine,” she says of Christianity.

Science appeals to her as knowledge that has been “passed down, debunked and tested for generations”.

“I’m just fortunate enough to be one of its flame carriers,” she says.

Music takes her somewhere else.“All that comes together when my brush touches the canvas, the rest is imagination.”

And then there is Djing. Akerele plays across genres and moods, an open-format DJ who does not seem inclined to settle for one emotional setting.

“Music is frequency. Frequency and wavelengths are inversely proportional. Wavelengths have their corresponding colours. That pretty much sums up why I say I’m an open-format DJ. I don’t just feel or exude one emotion—different feelings, different playlists, much like my art.”

These days, she is more particular about where she plays. Simply keeping people entertained is no longer enough.

“I would say I’m now a bit more selective of where I play solely because I don’t only seek to entertain but to feel, and hopefully have others feel as well.”

Djing has sharpened her observational instincts, too. A painter watches herself; a DJ watches the room. “Being a DJ has taught me to observe things, observe other people. When I’m painting I’m the subject, so I observe my actions and how things happen to me. Whereas as a DJ you look at how other people react to your output and how different peaks and troughs in a song each create a different atmosphere.”

Her own description of DJing is more evocative than any explanation of it could be. “Music, or rather Djing (to me), is the art of painting time.”