I think of myself as a woman, an Igbo woman, a Nigerian, an African, a person of
colour, an artist and the fascinating thing is that the layers I add to
how I identify myself changes over time, just keeps broadening as I move farther out
into the world
this is a family album and and... brace yourself... every photograph my family has
from when my parents got married until when I moved to America, so maybe like
late 90s early 2000, is in this one album. Six children... we're talking over 20 years
one album... but this is probably our family's most valued possession, the
figures in the work are based on my family, my life
my husband shows up in the work a lot, my siblings have been showing up in a
series. I'll also look for things like plants. I've been doing a combination of
plants that I found in Los Angeles but also plants that I found in Nigeria, so
you have this garden that really is nonsensical as well. Being a Nigerian
woman who, was also American at the same time, felt like a very fascinating space
and it was a space I knew I wasn't the only one who inhabited. I wanted to
contribute to the new crop of people who were really talking about that space or
trying to explore that space, not just in art, in literature, in music, in fashion
another thing that is important in the studio is my bag of portrait fabrics
I've collected these for years, this is from my brother's wedding, this is from
my mom's senatorial campaign and it's in pieces because I've used it for a number
of works already. It seems really in line with what I think of in my practice
which is those places where people expand on inherited traditions. So this
is all I have for now, that's why this bag is very precious to me, I will grab
it there was a studio fire. In the characters I create, I try to create this
individual that is multifaceted, so she might have a hairstyle that speaks to a
very rural life, but then she might be wearing a dress that speaks to
cosmopolitan life in Lagos and she's in a setting that speaks to high modern
architecture in New York, or then there's an old school TV that is playing Nigerian news
from the 80s... So once people really begin to pull the space apart on what's
happening, there is this feeling of being unable to put either the character or
the space in a clearly defined box, because it doesn't exist
So that's the first layer, there's the India rubber plant and there's the banana plants and then
number two was this. I love that it makes sense you can see both plans but you're
not quite sure what you're looking at because you're simultaneously looking at
all these different things at once
painting is something I can do for hours and lose track of time. You're so engaged
intellectually even in those moments where you're just sitting and staring at
the work. There's this beautiful union of your brain being on high alert and
working through it, like there's this complicated chess game going on in your
head about how to resolve a work and you're drawing and making decisions or
painting and with each move you make with the painting the equation is always
changing. I think there are more and more people in life, as people are moving
around for various reasons, who live in simultaneous spaces at the same time and
with the work I'm trying to get to that, this feeling of multiple spaces that
exists together and you kind of slip in and out from one to the other. It's about
talking of people who live or inhabit liminal spaces and the liminal space I'm
using, is one that I know because I've experienced it, which is my life
you