The Stars I Followed is Anthony Azekwoh’s fifth solo exhibition, he has been making art professionally for five years and he just recently turned 25, this is a very serious time period for him, as is this body of work. The Stars I Followed is headlined by Children Of The Sun, a collection of 25 portrait paintings of figures representing stars that are children of the sun.

The idea for this collection came to Anthony as far back as 2022, with the children first appearing in short story he’d written, and then in 2023, he began the process of realizing it when he drew the first iteration of the collection’s centerpiece, Procyon. Now in 2025, only a couple weeks ago did Anthony put out a call for models for a major project he’d begun working on, applications swarmed in and he handpicked 25 models himself that he felt would do justice to his vision.

I get there with my camera, positioning myself behind the scenes and watching models go in and out, he walks in front of the backdrop before each of them have their photograph taken, he does the pose and asks them to replicate it, he is delicate, detailed, the years have polished his eye for form, and he’s not about to be sloppy, he brings out his phone, shows a rough outline of the sketch grid to his associate photographer, Grant, this is where I catch my first glimpse of the collection, the colors awe me, the Picasso-esque sketches draw me in. Throughout the shoot, he never once helter skelters, he’s come to earn the peace of mind with which he carries his work, or if he’s panicking, we just don’t see it, the collected air around him is convincing, the way he talks to the models, the way he seems to sure everything is going to work out, I don’t ask any questions pertaining to his art even though I’ve begun putting together this article in my head, I just watch him work.

My opportunity to pick his mind would come a couple days later on my visit to his home studio, where he’s locked himself in, in-between drawing all the paintings for the exhibition, putting together a birthday party his mother insists he has, and organizing the exhibition itself, he’s exhausted, but this is the most excited he’s ever been about his art.

“I’m making 25 paintings in 10 days,” he tells me.

It might sound impossible but he stays true to it, this collection is a return to form for him, he tells me he’s always drawing, working, this was the work ethic that in 2020 produced The Red Man and Yasuke, paintings that projected him to global stardom in the art world, the same work ethic that had him present 4 solo exhibitions in 4 years, Homecoming, Becoming, There Is A Country and Owambe, sheer talent that’s taken him and his art across the world and has earned him a following of people who deeply resonate with his work.

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There’s a white board to his left, boxes ticked to represent the paintings he’s currently working on, his library is stacked with an overflow of books, African literature, books on art, philosophy, comics, his wall adorned with art from his contemporaries, he’s surrounded and immersed himself in this life, he’s a geek, a student, he’s constantly learning, evolving, his brushstrokes have gotten more refined over the years, his canvas bigger than ever, his stories fuller.

We talk about him being our definitive digital mythologist, a name I came up with for him that has come to really shape how I interact with his art, he is a champion of black skin in his work, religious figures we’d come to perceive as Caucasian are redesigned in his art, Adam, Eve, even Jesus Christ, all painted as black, he says it’s subconscious, a reflection of the people and faces he grew up around, Yasuke, the celebrated black samurai, The Red Man, a painting that has in the last couple years grown into its own oddly familiar mythos. He recognizes how much he’s leaned into painting epics, No Victor No Vanquished, his painting on the last day of Biafra, which is now the first digital painting acquired by the Yemisi Shyllon Museum, The Death Of Ikemefuna, which captures arguably the most important scene in Chinua Achebe’s celebrated novel, Things Fall Apart, stylistic tales, The Fates and The Boxer, which were on show at the exhibition, he treads the line between reimagining religious imagery and then imagining visually cultural intimacies that are in many ways essential parts of the Nigerian experience.

At the opening of the exhibition, he’s clearly in his element, surrounded by large framed prints of his work, he moves around, gracefully accepting the congratulations and hugs, he’s elated, albeit tired, the toll of the exhibition wearing heavy on him, but his heart is full, his joys are boundless, he leans on the wall watching people watch the 25 paintings, Children Of The Sun, they take in the collection with awe, staring into the details, some see themselves, some see people they know, some see a story so vast and sensationally aware that they are unable to view the collection as individual anymore but now as inseparable parts of a whole picture, this was my experience.

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It’s surreal to see a project come together like this, to be there at various points in its creation, to watch an artist at work, his interaction with the models, his interaction with his pen and screen, his interaction with the people at the exhibition, him taking his time to tell the story of the children, narrating them like friends he’d known for ages, every name dear to him, every face, this is the most lore heavy he’s been, he’s a world builder.

A week passes and I get to interview him in front of everyone for the exhibition’s closing, the topic is Reclaiming Identities. We talk about many of the things this article already says, especially his fascination with storytelling, as he was first a writer before a painter, he talks about the importance that played in his practice, he talks about what informed his decision to return back to portraits for this collection, going on to say that was what he started with, this is a full circle moment, he talks about how much can be communicated through the faces he paints, faces which are detailed and aged, faces that have experienced, lived, faces that communicate millions of emotions, eyes that contains centuries of life, this was the only way he knew how to go.

“Someone once told me I paint like I’m writing and I sculpt like I’m painting.” Anthony says when we moonwalk back to how literature has influenced his visual art.

He doesn’t even need to explain it, it’s obvious in his art, everything is connected, all in this universe he’s procured, everything is a process for him, his short stories bleed into the paintings, his paintings metamorphose into his sculptures. What’s next for him? After a project this ambitious, he’s making a conscious effort to lean more into his sculptures, dedicating more time to their design and production, his eyes are set on the possibilities they hold for him, he’s always working on publishing his first book, he wants to be as recognized as a writer of fiction as much as an artist, he doesn’t want one Anthony Azekwoh to suffer at the expense of another.

When we talk about him being a digital mythologist, after the success of this exhibition and in retrospective, his career up until this point, it wouldn’t be far beyond you to compare him to other great artists, Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Homer, Achebe, Fagunwa, Onobrakpeya, his icon Sam Spratt, even Neil Gaiman (who we don’t talk about anymore) and whoever it is that illustrated the Jehovahs Witness Bible, but Anthony has approached his work from a different angle, even a different medium from these people, that even with the similarities and influences, he’s carved his own niche that he’s exalted in, at his core he’s not any of these people, the stars he followed have led him here, to his own star, his self, Anthony Azekwoh.

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