the textile artist and designer kazeem agboola was born in oshogbo. he comes from a traditionally structured family – his father has two wives; kazeem's mother is the first wife, and kazeem is the second child and the first son.
to contribute to the family income, he learned tailoring from his mother at an early age. on the occasion of the many yoruba festivals as well as christian and muslim holidays there was so much to do that he had to sew a wide variety of decorative pictures. kazeem calls it house decoration (jesus is your blood, allah loves you, etc.)
he made his first artistic attempts at around the age of 12 with simple drawings. the initial spark for fabric batik came from his uncle akeem agboola, from whom kazeem received his first batik dyes and instruction in technique and design.
in 1990 he began his artistic training with femi johnson at the oshogbo artist movement. further years followed as an artist-in-residence at the adigun olosun art gallery. at various gallery workshops he combined paper drawing with batik technique. he quickly developed his own visual language, and his works began to receive greater attention. the well-known art gallery colour in africa in lagos exhibited some of his paper batiks and offered them for sale.
since 1994 kazeem agboola has worked exclusively as an artist. specialising in paper batik, batik clothing and oil painting, he works with motifs inspired by his home town. for example, a series of pictures was created, inspired by the famous oshun festival, with the titles "oshun festival", "oshun priest" and "oshun worshiper".
since 2002 kazeem agboola has lived mainly in germany and regularly exhibits in nigeria.