Biography
ARTIST STATEMENT:
I was born into a generation of advent hip-hop culture. A generation that fosters creativity, design and play over work and academic inclinations.
And yes, I found inspiration, creativity, artistic and imaginative prowess from reading comic books as a child and so I collected a lot of them. I even drew a lot of comics of my own with my own invented characters.
Studying art at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka would have never been an option if my father had not died early because he wanted us all to be engineers and doctors. Come to think of it, I would have made a very good mechanical engineer because I collected a lot of stuff as a child. I used to have a box full of odds and ends, pieces of electronics parts, cassette player motors, rotors, bearings and a lot of stuff I would rather not mention. I used to love knowing how stuff works, always eager to disassemble electronics piece by piece just to know how they were put together. But above all, I loved drawing; it gave me a sense of purpose.
Being an artist has shaped my perception of life. I am more interested in the super-physical than the physical representation of things. I am more interested in how our nerve endings disperse energy and electric charges to give birth to very simple ideas and thoughts.
I have been inspired and awed by the works of El Anatsui, Nsikak Essien, Peju Alatise, Frank Stella, Ishamu Noguchi, Diana Al-Hadid, Adebayo Jones, just to mention a few.
I have also realized that people could teach you to write, draw, paint, sculpt, assemble, weave, carve etc. but nobody can really teach you how to be an artist. I owe my creative evolution to the eclectic nature of our hip-hop culture; always evolving and borrowing from every culture, norm and tradition it encounters. If I were born before the proliferation of hip-hop, my art would have evolved rather differently.
I draw inspiration from everything I come across, including but not limited to physics, chemistry, Biology, Astronomy, Psychology, Philosophy, Medicine, Sociology, Technology, Cybernetics, Systems theory, Economics, Christianity, Islam, Eckankar, Buddhism, Africa Traditional Religions, Poetry, Fashion, Music, Animation, Books, Magazines and Hip-hop.
