Slawn is a Nigerian-born, London-based artist whose practice moves freely between painting, street culture, design, fashion and the deliberately unpredictable world he has built around himself. Born in Lagos in 2000, Olaolu Slawn first developed his visual language through Nigeria’s skate scene, working at Wafflesncream before co-founding the streetwear label Motherlan. After moving to London, he began painting during the 2020 lockdown, developing the exaggerated faces, caricatures and rapid, expressive marks that have become immediately associated with his work. Slawn’s work draws together street-art immediacy, humour, provocation and references to identity and popular culture. Just as important is his refusal to behave like a conventional artist: cars, skateboards, walls, canvases and everyday objects can all become surfaces, while irreverence and spontaneity remain central to both the work and the persona surrounding it. His rise has been unusually fast. Following an early London exhibition at Truman Brewery, Slawn went on to work with Saatchi Yates, design the statuette and stage for the 2023 BRIT Awards, reinterpret the FA Cup trophy, and create further work around the 2025 FA Cup Final. In 2024, he led Artsy’s ranking of artists showing the strongest year-over-year growth in collector inquiries. Slawn’s work thrives on contradiction — raw but deliberate, irreverent but increasingly embedded in contemporary culture.