Art-View-Snapshots: Sierra Leone
A Renaissance in Colour: Sierra Leone’s Art Scene, Reimagined
Walk through Freetown on a breezy afternoon and you might spot it: a batik curtain dancing in the wind, hanging from the window of a colonial house that’s seen better days. It’s not a gallery, but it might as well be. In Sierra Leone, art doesn’t wait for permission. It shows up where it wants to be—on walls, in courtyards, across glass, and sometimes, in the middle of a street.
A piece by John Francis, 'Reflection of Sacville Street',2025. Inspired by a photo taken by the artist in 1992 of a house that once existed at Sackville Street, Central part of Freetown.
There’s no national fine art school here—no formal pipeline. Artists teach themselves, learn abroad, or pick up skills from neighbours. The result is a scene that’s eclectic, surprising, and impossible to pin down. It’s not curated; it’s lived. From Mende(the largest ethnic group in Sierra Leone) textile motifs to Krio(descendants of ex-slaves and Maroons from Jamaica) architectural storytelling, Sierra Leone’s visual language is rooted in heritage—but never stuck in it. It’s a remix, a reimagining.
A mural by Freetown Street Art & Festive
Before the war, Sierra Leone’s art was shaped by figures like Christian Cole, the first West African to study at Oxford, whose cultural scholarship laid early foundations for artistic thought. Alusine Bangura preserved Mende and Temne(the 2nd largest ethnic group in Sierra Leone) traditions through intricate handwoven designs, while Sylvanus F. Morseray painted village life with quiet precision. After the war, artists like Patrick Tagoe-Turkson, Fatmata Jalloh, Mohamed Kargbo, and Isatu Sesay turned trauma into texture, creating work that didn’t just reflect history but wrestled with it.
Hickmatu Leigh, 'Sacred', 2023
Murals bloomed across Freetown. Not decoration—declaration. They reclaimed space, expressed grief, and imagined futures. From Hillcut Road to Congo Cross, Lumley to Aberdeen, walls became canvases for healing and hope. Street art in Sierra Leone is not a trend. It’s a tradition reborn.
Artistic Fusion: Remixing the Past
Today’s artists remix the past with boldness. Hickmatu Leigh is one of the sharpest voices among them. Her black-and-white portraits—often veiled or masked—turn silence into protest, meditating on visibility and resilience. In 2023, she won Best in Fest at the Women Deliver Arts and Film Festival in Kigali, and a year later, she received the UN Foundation’s SDG Vanguard Award. Her film Gboroka, an unflinching exploration of Female Genital Mutilation, was selected for the African Film Festival in New York. With residencies at Purposeful and commissions for UNICEF, WHO, and UNAIDS, Hickmatu has made her lens a scalpel, cutting through silence with precision.
'Gboroka' by Hickmatu Leigh
Choema(Julius Parker) works across various mediums, including painting, sculpture, batik, cartooning, and digital illustration. His murals brighten the Sierra Leone Museum and Radisson Blu Hotel, while his paintings document Creole(Krio) houses and market scenes with equal intensity. His cartoons bite into politics and religion, proving that art can satirise as well as preserve. Exhibiting internationally in Dubai’s Echoes of Sierra Leone and locally at the Independence Art Exhibition in Aberdeen, Choema’s work is at once archive and provocation, bridging memory with commentary.
A batik piece by Julius 'Choema' Parker, 'Fishing net', 2018, the fishing tool used locally in fishing communities in Sierra Leone, held by a woman dressed in native attire
Ranya S. Nirvan's glass transforms it into colour. The only artist in Sierra Leone working in stained glass, she creates abstract and symbolic panels that glow with solitude, resilience, and spirituality. As President of Kompin (a Krio word meaning 'Peers') Artists, she leads a collective committed to art as advocacy, healing, and charity; her practice embodies fragility transformed into strength. Winner of the Sisters’ Choice Award and the National Entertainment Award, she has shown at the US Embassy Trade Fair, the WAMA Conference at Bintumani, The Barray collective, and Reunion Freetown.
An untitled piece by Ranya Nirvan, 2022
Wizik(Ibrahim Hamid Koroma) is a self-taught filmmaker who redefined Sierra Leonean cinema. Starting with a borrowed camera in 2016, he founded One Afrika Studios and built a filmography that includes Run, Taxi, Love Never Fails, Leicester Peak, and Sansan, his most personal work, a meditation on memory and grief. He also directs music videos, most notably Drizilik’s hit Lemonade featuring The Therapist, giving Sierra Leone’s music a cinematic identity. Winner of the Tan Sri Limkokwing Award for Entrepreneurship, Wizik’s career is proof that grit, not gatekeepers, powers Sierra Leone’s film industry.
Ibrahim 'Wizik' Koroma 'San san'
John Francis brings memory to life through watercolour, having started painting during the civil war. His impressionistic style often focuses on Creole houses—fragile yet resilient symbols of Sierra Leone’s history. Uniquely, he documents the existence of structures that no longer stand, preserving the memory of what once was. This approach is rare in Sierra Leonean contemporary art, highlighting his distinctiveness. He has exhibited at grassroots cultural spaces such as The Barray and the Balmaya arts restaurant, deepening his connection to the community.
A painting by John Francis, 'Pademba Road', depicts a colonial-era Creole house on one of Freetown’s most historic streets.
A Renaissance, Reimagined
Sierra Leone’s art isn’t bound by legacy—it’s propelled by curiosity. It is not merely resilient but refreshing. It is not only recovering but reinventing. This is a renaissance in colour, in texture, in voice. And it is only just beginning.
A batik piece by Julius 'Choema' Parker, 'Who among us...?' 2021
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Glass painting by Ranya Nirvan, 'Hope', 2021
Pieced by Frederick Hazael Horton Sierra Leonean gallery assistant at unx-art, curating under the imprint KulturArt
