Ayanfe is Creating for Her Inner Child

Ayanfe is a captivating personality. She is genteel and yet uncompromising; spirited but measured; equal parts eclectic and hyper-focused. Within the first few minutes of speaking to her, I fell in love with her buoyant ambiance. This, I would soon learn, is a fairly common reaction to Ayanfe; everyone who meets her falls a little in love.  She is a polymath straddling visual arts, photography, design and Djing. Her instagram page, a tableau of lurid, checkered tiles, encapsulates her shape-shifting form. She is also the founder of What Would You Do, one of Nigeria’s fastest growing fashion brands. WWYD is more than just a label;  it’s a haven for creatives of all stripes and has grown into one of the country’s most culturally relevant brands. 

When she joined me through Google Meet, she had just returned from a European Tour, which saw her spread the gospel of WWYD, across major cities in Europe. “We’re working on getting the media files, then also attending to new drops. To be honest, I think WWYD has been taking 80% of my time since May,”   she says. Her voice is feathery light, and smooth, but carries a seriousness that lends weight to every word. The tour, she confides, was a spontaneous venture; the finer details were improvised along the way. The overarching goal, however, was clear from the start; stake out new grounds for the brand, by bringing it to new audiences. With this aim in mind, she and her team gathered pieces from the brand and set off. We didn’t have a plan. It’s just like when someone puts you in a strange land, and you’re just there to figure yourself out.

Executing a boots-on-the-ground marketing strategy is never easy, more so, for a nascent brand in foreign terrain. Naturally, the tour came with its fair share of hurdles for Ayanfe and her team. Yet the brand’s magnetic essence proved to be their ray of sunshine. People were drawn to the brand, not merely for the quality of the pieces, or the stylishness of the clothes, but for the brand’s affable personality. Scrolling through their instagram page is like wandering through a virtual theme park. The brand feels warm, and fuzzy; whimsical. The designs, clothes, and product shots are playful and free spirited; like a child’s art exhibit, yet with a refined touch. Their community centric approach also bolsters the brand’s appeal.  

Still, the complexities of navigating a foreign land persisted. She soon realized that the brand had a “family” in the UK. WWYD then organized a pop-up there, met with a rapturous reception. The event space, painted in an off-white color, was adorned with photographs, art pieces and vibrant graphic posters. A photo booth was set up; food was plentiful; and music filled the air. Racks of the brand’s colorful clothing lined the room. There was no host, the audience, most of them strangers, took charge. Volunteers stepped up to assist with various activities, and everything went to plan. “80% of people that came around, I didn’t know them from anywhere. We wanted to push our message to a new audience.” The same thing happened in Berlin and Amsterdam; people received the products well and fell in love with the brand’s community-centered ethos. 

Today Ayanfe is a multi-hyphenated virtuoso with a flotilla of laurels to her name. But this career path, her current eclectic and often chaotic work life, wasn’t always obvious. She was born into a large polygamous family. As it is with many polygamous homes where resources are stretched thin, over several sub-families, her family’s finances were strained. But even with the family’s strained finances, her mother made sure she and her siblings were mostly unaware of their struggles. “I had a very amazing mother, she was very good at masking things.” Ayanfe was vivacious as a child, and academically adept. And so, at the end of school sessions, she would win prizes. But her parents would never pay for the end-of-the-year parties, where the prize-giving ceremony would take place, and she’d be denied admission at the gate. Social exclusion, especially as a result of financial hardship, tends to inflict severe emotional distress on children, oftentimes leaving permanent scars. But her mum, clever and relentless, found ways to mask things, giving a favorable outlook to events that would otherwise be bleak, she tells me. 

Her mum would arrive at her school irate, like a hen jousting on behalf of her kids. She would fight for them (her and her siblings) to gain entrance and Ayanfe would claim her prize. They would then go home to a freshly cooked pot of concoction rice, which to her felt more special than the jollof rice and meat, served to the other pupils who paid the party fees. On regular days Ayanfe and her three siblings from her mother shared one  egg amongst themselves. But this day was special, they would each get a full egg with their bowls of rice. With a little creative stimulation from her mother, recontextualization, they would view their experience as superior to what the others at their school had. “I felt like a king because I was eating one egg. I never felt like I lacked anything because my mom was just able to mask all of these things.” 

This ability to recontextualize situations rubbed off on her. Today, it informs her perspective on life. She credits playing as a child, fashioning toys out of junk items, with honing her art sensibilities, and strengthening her mettle. She and her friends would see other kids playing with toys. Knowing their parents couldn’t afford those excesses, they’d think up clever ways to make their own. Sardine tins turned to toy cars, paper and broomsticks transformed into kites. In the instances when her bike had problems, she and her friends became mechanics. Those  moments etched the value of friendship and community in her mind. Most people view the omnipresent noise that permeates Lagos as simply chaos. And it is. But within the chaos—the chatter of horns blaring, and engines revving; the cacophony of generators running; the bawling of the city’s thugs: agberos—she sees a poetic essence. Harmony within dissonance. 

Her friends, her community, have always been a source of strength, and a compass for navigating thorny situations. A lot of times they saw flecks of brilliance in her before she saw them herself. She initially wanted to be a dancer. But during classes, she’d spend time sketching everything; her teachers, friends, random thoughts that wafted through her mind. At home she was reprimanded by her mother for pouring so much time into what she considered an activity with little prospects. And also for defacing her textbooks with drawings. 

Shaped by her mother’s scoldings, she came to consider drawing a sin. So when she got into secondary school and started receiving praise, from her friends, for her artistic prowess, she felt conflicted. In 2013, she got her first commission, from a friend. At the time, she had not yet decided to take art professionally, but this project watered the seeds. In 2014, she was admitted into the University of Lagos to study microbiology: a non-sequitur given her creative flair, but she credits it with shaping her into the artist she is today. ‘‘I studied microbiology. I wanted to do arts, but to be honest, I’m thankful I studied microbiology even though I wasn’t interested in it. If I had studied arts, it would have been very difficult to unlearn a lot of things.’’

In school, she started making art professionally. Bored of the hyper-realistic paintings she was making, she started experimenting and arrived at her signature style—a wholesome cocktail of cubist, impressionist, and surrealist ideas. In her third year, she accidentally stumbled into photography. She had lent someone some money. Unable to pay back, they handed a camera over, as payment. She started taking photographs, documenting people and events. She applied to GT Bank’s Art635 workshop and got in. Following the workshop, she was scouted by Nlele Institute, a non-profit photography organization. Her success grew. And soon she began to straddle art and photography seamlessly. DJing came recently,two years ago; she has always been adept at matching songs. In her art studio, while painting, she would sing, and instinctively know the right song to sing next. ‘‘My friends call me ‘mash-up machine’.’’ She says laughing. Her friends recognized this flair and prodded her to take Djing professionally. 

At this point in our conversation, she is relaxed and loquacious, almost childlike. She tells me how her entire career has been defined by bristling against monotony and staying through to her inner child. She tells me of a phrase she invented, to keep herself grounded: LET THE KID PAINT. ‘‘It just means to let yourself free of whatever bondage it is you’re fighting, and connect to your inner child.’’ She says. 

Being a multi-hyphenate comes with unique challenges. There have been times when people have discouraged her from widening her berth, urging her instead to focus. Sometimes this advice comes from a place of concern, other times it has come wreathed in malaise. She recalls one time she was attacked  for experimenting with several creative mediums. She was still in university at the time. After making art, or taking photographs, she would broadcast to people. When she just started taking photographs, someone sent a scathing critique, derisively telling her to stick to one thing. It threw her off balance for a while, leaving her with a trepidation for spreading her wings to full capacity. The art world, by default, also comes with constraints. Subjective constraints such as feeling beholden to the tastes of buyers and collectors; and objective ones such as being constrained to create art within rigid dimensions determined by the space the painting will sit. ‘Sometimes I get worried about all of these things because of the art market, which I feel is becoming very stiff.’ In these moments, when she feels the squeeze of external constraints jutting against her free-flowing nature, she calms herself with her watchword: LET THE KID PAINT.