Lemi Ghariokwu

Lemi Ghariokwu (born Emmanuel Sunday; 26 December 1955), also known simply as Lemi, is a Nigerian painter, illustrator and designer who is most renowned for providing many of the original cover images for the recordings of Nigerian musician Fela Kuti.

Lemi Abiodun Ghariokwu was born Emmanuel Sunday on 26 December 1955, in Agege, Lagos, Nigeria.

He is from Agbor, Delta State but has spent all his life in Lagos.

He grew up in Igbobi, Fadeyi in Lagos State with his parents and siblings.

During his school days, he often spent his long vacations at Ajegunle.

His father wanted him to be a mechanical engineer, so he attended a technical school, Yaba College of Technology Secondary School, where he studied technical and science subjects, but this was where his school journey ended.

He decided to train himself to master his own style of art.

Although his formal academic journey ended here, education did not.

He read and equipped himself constantly with knowledge and developed his art skill alongside.

He grew up listening to Reggae songs and studying metaphysics.

His maturity into self and social consciousness was facilitated by Fela Kuti, Peter Tosh, Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, Kwame Nkrumah and Steve Biko.

Lemi is married with four children – Asilem Eweka, Tamara Ajasa, Omotosho, and Odafin-Nevo Shekinah.

Lemi met Fela Kuti in 1974 through Babatunde Harrison (a journalist for Sunday Punch).

After Harrison walked into a pub and stumbled on an art work Lemi had done for the pub owner, he requested to see more and he saw one of the illustrations Lemi did of Roforofo Fight.

This spurred him to take Lemi to meet Fela.

On this first meeting, Fela was impressed with Lemi's work and offered to pay him but he refused the money.

This became his ticket into Kalakuta Republic.

Lemi's relationship with Fela Anikulapo Kuti was very cordial.

He gave Lemi total freedom with his work and thoughts to the level that he just did as he pleased, albeit responsibly, with how and what he wanted to express.

Lemi had the rare privilege of putting his photograph and comments on some of the covers and was treated like a son, friend, adviser and comrade by the Afrobeat legend.

Ghariokwu's approach to his work with Kuti involved listening to and digesting the music and then expressing his reaction in his paintings, design and comments, which provide a high level of detail on the many album covers he delivered.

Ghariokwu's work involves a variety of styles, often using vibrant colours and individuated typefaces of his own design.

His art is said to be rebellious, comical, political, even erotic but most of all he is a genius in pictorial narration, realism and iconicity.

Many of Ghariokwu's cover images echo and sometimes comment on the work and politics of the recordings that they accompany, serving a consciously integrated meta-textual function.

He is famous for his captivating and intricate record sleeves designs and he never fails to give life to lyrics through his pictorial images.

He created and mastered 26 of Fela's album covers.

In the early 1980s, Ghariokwu was the consulting album cover designer for Polygram (Phonogram+Polydor) records in Nigeria for 11 years.

He also printed and designed album covers for many Kennis Music artists, including 2 Face, Lagbaja, Kenny St. Brown, Sound Sultan and many others, for 11 years.

Ghariokwu has designed more than 2000 album covers and facilitated art workshops abroad.

He designed for EMI, CBS and Ivory music.

He also designed logos for Fame Weekly, Ivory Music and National Encomium.

MTV president Mark Rosenthal commissioned the painting Everybody's Gotta be Somebody from Ghariokwu.

This inspired a film documentary by Aaron Koenisberg.

Ghariokwu's work has attracted much attention in the West and is the subject of various retrospective exhibitions.

His painting Anoda Sistem, created in 2002, is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

Some of Ghariokwu's archive is now in the possession of Punch Records, whose CEO Ammo Talwar has invited the academic community to utilise this material in productive ways.

The Observer Music Magazine called Ghariokwu "King of Covers" during his solo exhibition in the UK in 2004.

Aside from designing 26 album covers for Fela Anikulapo Kuti, Ghariokwu also designed covers for Osita Osadebe, James Iroha, Bob Marley, Kris Okotie, Lucky Dube, Gilles Peterson, Miriam Makeba, and about a hundred other musicians across the globe.

In 2008, twenty of Ghariokwu's artworks were published in Area 2, a book showcasing 100 emerging and influential graphic artists in the world, published by Phaidon Press in New York.

He also designed the cover of Cassava Republic's republication of Fela: This Bitch of a Life – the authorised biography of Fela Kuti by Carlos Moore.