Artist Spotlight: Ankara, Concrete & Prayer: Falex's Story
Emmanuel Maurice—known to the art world as Falex—is a self-taught multidimensional artist whose practice spans visual art, music, and fashion. Raised in a deeply religious household as the third of five children, Falex's creative instincts emerged in early childhood when his older brother first placed a pencil in his hand and taught him to draw. What began as a gift passed between siblings has since grown into a lifelong calling that has taken Falex from Lagos to stages and galleries across the globe. In this candid conversation, Falex opens up about the family roots of his creativity, the grief that sharpened his purpose, and why he believes greatness is often built in nothingness.
artdey: Can you share your journey into the world of art?
Falex: There’s never been a point I felt like I just got in, since I am art myself. My existence is art. From my earliest days, my brother held my hand and showed me how to draw. I started running with it, and at some point it replaced studies and the “serious” parts of learning. My parents were not having it—they saw art as a distraction rather than an attraction. My dad kept trashing my art stuff, but my mom somehow let it flourish.
Art made me special in school. I mastered calligraphy and could write like anybody. I had girls bringing me their notes to copy because my handwriting was that good. By secondary school, I was one of the known artists, and that started making my name ring out. I was the kid who didn’t do the conformist thing. Everyone else followed the formula; I didn’t.
I’m a multidimensional artist—art, music, and fashion. Art inspires my music, and music inspires my fashion. Somehow, these things all feed into each other. And I’ll say this: my parents were proper clergy, very traditional, and I was the hard one to put together. But it could only have taken those two people to raise me right, and they did a great job. Rest in peace to them always.
artdey: You mentioned being self-taught. How did that shape your path?
Falex: I’ve never studied art professionally. When I was about to get into school, I couldn’t afford to study art formally, so I just had to push with it on my own. I made myself a promise: as long as my peers were going to be in school getting great, even if I couldn’t make it to their level through formal education, nobody would have anything to say when they came out. Art made my life difficult at times, but it taught me to thrive with nothing. That led me to realise that greatness is often built in nothingness. That’s not just a saying for me—that has been my journey.
artdey: How do you balance conveying a strong message through your art while ensuring it resonates aesthetically with your audience?
Falex: I’m confident in my work, so I’m not going to try to control how people feel. I follow the thought, the leading, the little whispers. The right audience follows. I don’t lead the art, I’m just the medium through which it’s created. The art itself is invisible; I just bring it to life.
As an artist, I have to live in continuous chaos. Everybody is never going to agree. When it comes to commissioned pieces, I let my clients lead—I’m serving them. But the clients who get the best out of me are the ones who brief me and then release me. They tell me what’s in their head, but then trust me to run with it. Someone once told me, “You don’t know when to stop.” That’s because I exceed expectations—that’s just how I’m wired.
artdey: Where do you see your art going in the future, and what do you hope to achieve?
Falex: I’m not about being the best, because I’m not the best at what I do. But I know I’m going to be the greatest Black artist that ever walked the earth. I say that with my whole chest.
I’m already in homes and countries I don’t even know about. I did one thousand pieces with a violin in nine hundred days during one of the most difficult periods of my life—I lost both parents within five years, relocated, and went through it all. That project was born from trying to find my soul. I was just walking into places I didn’t know, using a mirror to capture the beauty of whatever was present. Restaurants, streets, and cities in Canada. I was everywhere.
My biggest aim is posterity. I want my name to open doors for other people when I’m gone. I’ve found that scars are prices we pay to start a life, and I don’t want the people coming after me to face the same struggles. I want to make a way.
artdey: Tell us about your biggest influences and how they inspire your work.
Falex: My brother isn’t just an inspiration—he’s the essence of my story. He’s the genesis of this whole thing. After my mom’s funeral in 2023, we were at the hospital with my sister. We were sitting outside, and I looked over at my brother, and he was trying to draw a flower. A flower—that’s the most basic thing. He couldn’t do it. He hadn’t drawn in a very long time. It broke my heart, because this was the person who held my hand and showed me the warmth of this thing. And in that moment, I realised: he passed the torch. He was born to hand it over, and I’ve been running with it ever since. Inspiration comes and goes, takes different forms and faces. But my brother? He is the foundation.
And then my dad—he had the most amazing handwriting, and that gave me the drive to master calligraphy in school. My elder sister was good with pastels. Even my aunt, who was deeply religious, and my uncle, who would buy cardboard and write beautiful things—it was all around me. Art was a family language, even if they didn’t always know they were speaking it.
artdey: Can you tell us about the piece connected to CMS Road—the £32,000 work?
Falex: That piece is the closest sentiment I have to my grandmother and my mother. There’s a heart in that work I would do anything to protect.
The story starts with a competition tied to the Royal House—a £32,000 prize with a £2,000 entry fee. I told my mom I was entering. Now, my mom was the biggest, most priceless supporter I’ve ever known. She asked me for time, and then she did something extraordinary. She took her mother’s wrapper—Ankara fabric, the only one she had left of her own mom, and she prayed over it for three nights. Then she told me to take it to the church altar and leave it there for another three nights, so she could release it for my art. That wrapper became my canvas.
I reinforced the Ankara with concrete—made the concrete thin like tea, spilled it on the floor, laid the fabric over it, let it dry, flipped it, then added another layer. All while making sure I never lost the detail of the Ankara pattern itself. Then I taped the fabric square, scraped it, and started painting on top of it. If you look at the borders of the piece, you can see the Ankara showing through, but most people don’t even realise it’s fabric. They think I drew the border design.
I was fasting through the whole process. I wouldn’t eat until evening, then I’d pray through the night because there was no time. I had to compress a week’s worth of spiritual dedication into three days. When it was finished, I took it to a studio, shot a digital photo, and sent it to London for the competition.
Here’s the twist: in the anxiety of trying to meet the deadline, my sister and I uploaded the entry and tagged it wrong—”Vibes Africana” instead of the correct competition tag. It was disqualified on a technicality. But the work was so strong that they withheld the soft copy with my consent. They couldn’t let it go, even though it didn’t qualify. The art had nothing to do with a competition anymore—it had surpassed it.
When I told my mom, she wasn’t angry the way I expected. She said, “The art was supposed to stay with you until you are bigger, because its worth is actually bigger than that prize. If this finds you later, it will make a magical thing.” She told me not to cry about it. We really needed the money at the time, but my mom said, “Nothing is bigger than you. Just live with this.”
Every morning after that, my mom would come and touch that painting. Every single morning. When I relocated, I rolled it up and travelled with it on a bus because I couldn’t afford a flight. I brought my mom to live with me for about a year and a half—I think that’s the only real compensation I ever got to give her before she passed.
At the depth of being broke after her death, someone offered to buy the piece. I walked away. I sat with the painting, wept my soul out, and told myself: I would kill the value of it if I sold it. I would kill my mom’s effort. That competition was worth £32,000—I wouldn’t trade the painting for anything less. I’d rather keep it. My mom read the Bible cover to cover twice—once for herself and once for me. That’s how bonded we were. That piece should be worth a million dollars for what she poured into it.
Don’t miss the chance to own a piece of his extraordinary journey.