Esiri Erheriene-Essi was born in London in 1982. In 2004 she received her BA in Media Studies and later in 2006 she received her Master of Fine Arts at the University of East London. After moving to the Netherlands to take up a residency at De Ateliers in 2007 she began to paint people she didn’t know, using images found in old Polaroid photographs or old magazines that she would buy from ebay. She was intrigued by the stories of these unknown people, portrayed in familiar, everyday scenes.

In 2009 she won the prestigious Dutch Royal Painting prize, and in 2014 she had her first museum solo exhibition at the Museum Arnhem. She has had solo exhibition in Galerie Ron Mandos in Amsterdam and De Ateliers in Amsterdam.

For every pork chop there's a frying pan