Daniella Fegbeboh, born in Nigeria and based in Canada, is a visual artist and the creator of Afrojesters. Her work blends playful, cartoonish visuals with bold colors and geometric patterns.

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Afrojesters is a visual universe that uses playful, surreal Black figures to explore the human condition.

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Playful art for serious minds, or serious art for playful minds.

 

THE SMILE KNOWS

"The Smile Knows"

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"I am neither naïve nor conventionally wise; I am both. I am the archetypal jester: a playful, honest observer and truth-teller. Pretentiously naïve on the surface, profoundly wise beneath.

I notice the light and shadow in myself and in all humanity, giving me the courage to capture what is celebrated and reveal what is often ignored.

I see contradictions, tensions, and hypocrisies, translating them through humor, play, and observation. ​

I often feel both inside and outside the world, like a wanderer tasked with capturing life. Detached enough to see clearly, yet attached enough to understand.

My sensitivity, deep emotions, and self-awareness attune me to what others overlook, creating both distance and understanding alike. I’ve been told I “can’t read the room,” but I can. Isn’t it easier to live in a lie, take everything at face value, and never question? Perhaps it is, but reality finds me faster than I’ve been found in every game of hide and seek I played as a child.

My colors, shapes, patterns, and surreal characters embody joy, beauty, exaggeration, chaos, spontaneity, entertainment, and imagination: the jester’s performance.

Beneath the playfulness lies observation, emotional truth, identity, existential questions, psychological insight, and cultural storytelling: the jester’s wisdom.

Through this lens, I capture beauty, chaos, joy, love, ego, insecurity, innocence, contradiction, hypocrisy, fear, play, masks, performance, and the dance between reality and illusion: the jester’s audience and content.

Humans are paradoxical and dual in nature, and from this understanding, the Afrojesters are born."

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- Daniella Fegbeboh, Nigerian-born, Canada-based visual artist. 

 

WHO ARE WE, WE ARE WHO?

 Click here to read more on Afrojesters. 

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