Ifueko Abajue

Based in Calgary, Alberta, Ifueko Abajue is a contemporary paper artist who turns everyday paper into detailed sculptural pieces. Her career has spanned engineering, marketing and communications, wellness coaching, and change management, yet throughout it all, she has remained committed to making art, inspired by a lifelong love of paper and its creative potential. 

She studied Graphic Design at the University of Calgary, and although her current practice is largely self-taught, it is informed by strong design principles. Over the past year, she has refined a unique technique using tightly coiled cardstock to create dense, structured forms. Each piece is created slowly, requiring many hours of careful work to build depth, strength and detail. 

Her work explores the visual and tactile qualities of paper, often evoking the softness of fabric. She works with color, light, pattern, scale, and texture, drawing inspiration from the changing landscapes of the Canadian Prairies, as well as urban and global environments. 

Using high-quality archival cardstock, Ifueko creates surfaces that catch the light in subtle ways, producing a soft sheen and shifting shadows that enhance their fabric-like quality. Through this detailed process, she transforms simple strips of paper into multi-toned sculptures that add warmth, depth, and quiet elegance to modern spaces.