Olana Janfa,acclaimedEthiopian-Norwegian visual artist and musician, has teamed up with Harvey Sutherland (Disclosure, Khruangbin) for his latest single ‘Price Of The House’ — a high spirited take on what happens to your social life once your friends get chained to a mortgage. The track is out today via NLV Records.
As a Naarm/Melbourne-based multidisciplinary artist, Olana has cultivated an instantly recognisable presence locally and internationally, with a perspective spanning politics, privilege and pop culture. Since his debut single ‘Skillful Man’ and EP Chicken On Bike — which featured two Harvey Sutherland-produced tracks — plus ‘Mosquito Bite’ with Swick earlier this year, Olana’s instinct as a self-taught creative has drawn global support from The Line of Best Fit, BBC Radio 6, fbi.radio, 3RRR and PBS FM among others.
Returning with his loose signature, sing-speak patter over Sutherland’s pulsing reggaeton riddim, ‘Price Of The House’ finds Olana clocking a very specific Australian phenomenon: people work themselves into the ground to buy a house, then can’t afford to actually enjoy their lives once they’re in it.
He says the inspiration for the song came out of a conversation with a friend. “We’re both Africans living in Australia, and he was laughing that if he ever bought a house here he’d never have any money left to go out. We just laughed and were like: yeah, that’s probably true,” Olana explains. “First people save for a house, so they don’t want to go out. Then they buy it, and they still can’t go out because they spent all their money. It’s OK to buy the house but you gotta come outside sometimes.”
Though best known as a painter, Olana has always drawn inspiration from music — with reggae, hip-hop and afrobeat lyrics regularly sparking new visual ideas. His work spans murals, fashion collaborations, book illustration, and creative partnerships with the likes of Nike, Nicholas Daley, NGV and SBS, and recognition coming from Vogue UK, Vogue Living, It’s Nice That, Hypebeast, Broadsheet and The Sydney Morning Herald. Fresh back from the 2026 Darwin Street Art Festival, Olana has a return run of workshops lined up at NGV this month and also joins the upcoming Winterlude group show at Mars Gallery in Naarm/Melbourne, showcasing the range he’s built across visual art and music.
Olana’s artworks and songs keep feeding each other, with the same storytelling and cultural observations turning up in both. True to form, the music arrives with original artwork by Olana himself, another artifact from the unique world he’s built across music, fashion and art.
‘Price Of The House‘ is out now, buy/stream here.