Yet again, the power of the social media as a powerful marketing tool was demonstrated recently when President Donald Trump hailed the amazing talent of a young Nigerian Artist Oyedele Adedokun a.k.a Creative_Doks.
Adedokun, a Ballpoint artist drew the portrait of the US President and shared the image on his handle @Doks_Arts explaining that it took him about 70 hours to work on and achieve the final result. He also tagged the US President and asked that his followers retweet the image until the US President sees it.
True to his aspirations, the painting got the attention of Trump who retweeted the tweet containing the image and described him as a ‘Wonderful Artist’ He also advised the Nigerian artist not to give up on his dreams.
“Not only did I see it @Doks_Art, I think it is fantastic. You are a wonderful artist, never give up your dream!” Trump tweeted.
His exploit is coming shortly after another Nigerian pencil artist, Eli Waduba drew the portrait of American Actor, Kevin Hart and posted the image on his social media account.
After days of waiting and thousands of retweets later, Waduba got exactly what he asked for, Hart acknowledged the drawing.
The drawing bore a remarkable likeness to the picture of Hart placed side by side, which prompted Hart to say he’d buy the portraits and even went on to commission Waduba for three more.
“I see it and I want to purchase it…I also want to support you and your amazing talent by giving you a fee to do a pencil drawing of 3 of my celebrity friends that I can gift it to. DM your info and let’s get to work” Hart had written on Twitter.
Recall that in 2016, oil paintings by the artist Olumide Oresegun were widely shared on social media as many took them to be actual photos. He gained worldwide recognition and even featured on international news channel CNN.
The stories illustrated above seems to be a precedent amongst artists in Nigeria who are leveraging on the power of the social media to showcase their talents to global audiences who they would probably have not met but for the use of social media.
This position is supported by Nigerian art curator Akinyemi Adetunji who posited that the trend has been made possible mostly because of the power of social media.
“The Nigerian art circle used to be closed up. It was just made up of a few people who were avid collectors, but because of the influence of social media, it has opened up the industry to external influences, to many eyes” he said.
