Biography

VILLAGER (b. Abdulrasheed Adekunle Adaranijo), they/them, is a Nigerian-born Contemporary Transdisciplinary Artist, Cultural Producer, and African Spirituality Practitioner who oscillates between painting, collage, sculpture, performance, experimental film, installation, curation, and cultural facilitation, actively mapping and querying the intersections of material memory & intelligence, Yorùbá knowledge production, and postcolonial African identity as an evolving interconnected topography of critical inquiry. VLLAGER's practice which is deeply informed by their migration from Lagos, Nigeria, to the U.S. in 2013, explores and traces the relationality between objects, bodies, and spaces—excavating how we are shaped and transformed by what we carry, by what sustains us, by what is known and yet to be remembered, by what is seen and unseen, by what refuses erasure and lingers in the fragments—in a deep activation of Afrodiasporic memory, meaning, and world-making that forges transformative pathways from the past-present toward the future. 

VILLAGER's transdisciplinary research practice unfolds as a ritual of wayfinding that uncovers and challenges the sublime, confluent, and often contradictory forces that shape "tradition"—the evolution and dissemination of culture, history, identity, consciousness, and belonging—as it slips and strengthens through the contours of time, spirit, place, memory, and material. Their work also links traditional Yorùbá epistemologies, cosmologies, and ontologies with broader African spiritual technologies and philosophies across the diaspora, drawing on ancestral, spiritual, anthropological, and material-based approaches, and situating them within their contemporary transmissions. 

VILLAGER is formally trained as a Water Microbiologist and Environmental Researcher, earning a B.S. in Environmental Chemistry from Towson University in 2020, stepping away from their Master's program in Marine Estuary Environmental Science at UMBC in 2022 to pursue a dedicated and directed studio practice. VILLAGER has been the subject of solo exhibitions–"Devotion, Dreams, and Destiny" at the Eubie Blake Cultural Center (2025), "(O)KAN: recent works by VILLAGER (2025), ÀṢẸ: Embodying the Divine (2024), and  BUSH BOY! (2022) in Baltimore, MD. Their visual art practice continues to find resonance through group exhibitions both stateside and internationally including, Sou(l): Mostra de Arte Afro-Diaspórica, Artspace Vigidal, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Diasporic Crossing, Southside Contemporary, Richmond, VA, BLAQ SHEEP, Superchief Gallery LA, Los Angeles, CA, AFROFUTURISM: 100 years after the Harlem Renaissance, Papermill Playhouse, Millburn, NJ, B24 (Best in Baltimore) Artscape Exhibition, Riggs Gallery & Leidy Gallery (MICA), Baltimore, MD to name a few. VILLAGER's performance practice has garnered institutional commissions and invitations at The Peale Museum, THE ROUSE COMPANY FOUNDATION GALLERY, Creative Alliance, and Maryland Art Place. Their artwork can be found in private art collections in Los Angeles, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and Rio de Janeiro. 

Beyond the studio, VILLAGER has presented lectures at Maryland Institute College of Art, Yale University, Towson University, and Morgan State University. In 2025, they also served as a Guest Teaching Artist for the Baltimore Museum of Art’s Art After Hours program, facilitating a drop-in art-making workshop in conjunction with the Amy Sherald: American Sublime exhibition. Their work has been featured in publications such as WBAL-TV, DGX Magazine, BmoreArt, the Baltimore Banner, and NUNAR, and has received several awards, including the Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award (2024) and, most recently, the Baltimore Mayor’s Office Individual Artist Award (2025).