Telling women’s stories through digital art

Women are the central focus of Olanike Ladokun’s works. The digital portrait artist has been working at the intersection of identity, memory, and womanhood since 2021, giving a voice to the underrepresented.

THE COVID-19 pandemic brought profound economic and social disruption. Beyond the millions of lives lost globally, countless individuals and businesses faced significant hardship.

Among those affected was digital portrait artist Olanike Ladokun, who had been working as a copywriter at an advertising agency. Although she had long nurtured a passion for digital portraiture, brimming with ideas she hoped to realise through illustration, she lacked the opportunity and collaboration to pursue it fully. That changed when the pandemic led to mandatory unpaid leave at her workplace due to financial strain.

That was the opportunity she needed to take her art seriously and hone her craft.  She embraced digital portraiture to advance the cause of women, to tell factual stories about their triumphs and challenges.

Since fully committing to her practice in 2021, women have remained the central focus of Ladokun’s work because she is driven to reclaim visibility for Black women. The artist has been working at the intersection of identity, memory, and womanhood, exploring how portraiture can challenge dominant narratives while amplifying the voices of historically underrepresented people in the arts.

Her work investigates themes of identity migration, heritage, and emotional presence, using the human face and body as sites of dialogue between personal experience and collective history. Through layered compositions and expressive visual language, the artist creates portraits that hold both vulnerability and strength, inviting audiences to reconsider ideas of beauty, belonging, and self-definition.

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A recent artwork, ‘The Right to be seen’, for instance, is a response to an offensive skit featuring an albino lady with poor eyesight.  Ladokun felt so strongly about the skit that she created a quadriptych featuring women with vitiligo, albinism, alopecia and tribal marks.   Instead of framing the woman with albinism through her struggle, the artist focuses on her calm presence.

This approach extends across the series. In the vitiligo panel, the subject’s skin is striking and beautiful rather than something to conceal. The remaining panels present alopecia and tribal marks as integral aspects of identity and cultural history, not flaws to be hidden. Together, the works reflect Ladokun’s empathy and her commitment to celebrating women who are often marginalised or misunderstood. She aims to affirm beauty and self-acceptance on their own terms.

In another work, ‘Broken’, Ladokun addresses gender-based violence in Nigeria. The piece features a stark black background with the word ‘Broken’ in bold white text. The letter “o” transforms into a beam of light, illuminating a sorrowful woman in white, holding a red scarf. Even without explanatory text, the artwork conveys a powerful sense of grief and anger at the persistence of such violence.

But Ladokun is not all about protest and activism for women. She also examines lighter issues by highlighting their softness, strength, and individuality through details like skin tone, hair, and expression. She presents them with dignity and presence, as we see in her works, including ‘Nina’, a likely shout-out to the inimitable singer, Nina Simone. ‘Back to our Roots’ depicts a black woman with her luxuriant, full afro stylishly styled.

Through digital portraiture, Ladokun tells nuanced stories of womanhood while embracing the medium’s flexibility with colour, texture, and emotion. With quiet determination, she continues to challenge stereotypes and reclaim space for Black women, highlighting their presence and contributions through artworks that are both understated and deeply resonant.

For Ladokun, digital portraiture is more than a medium; it is a powerful tool for storytelling, empowerment, and social dialogue.