Artist 248
Uche Uzorka
Mixed Media
Uche Uzorka (born 1974) is a Nigerian mixed media artist. Uzorka’s practice incorporates painting, collage, cutting and pasting, charcoal, and ink drawing in an examination of processes of urban street culture.
Uche Uzorka’s connect the past and the present in addressing the challenges of nation building in Nigeria in the riveting ink drawings as well as exploring processes of urban street culture in Lagos.
His meticulous attention is seen in how he creates a myriad of overlapping patterns, bodies, and signs, tightly congested together to form a dense combination of complex design. Uzorka’s drawings cross between abstract and figurative with a strict and rigorous attention to detail that creates structure and congeals fluid power in his work.
By referencing found imagery from product labels and advertisements, his most iconic works signal a critique of consumer culture, or at the very least, the individual (namely the viewer) as a product of commodification, identified by what they buy, use, and the advertisements that hail to them.
His works on paper suggest an exploration more akin to daydreaming, about the inner workings of his thought process rather than about a specific conceptual message that prescribes the overall project.
Uzorka explains: “When I make art, sometimes the process is so powerful that I cannot say that when I start with this, it would end like that. I like the fact that in between the beginning and the end, there is always an intriguing story that could change. For example, when I start with A, it could be B, C, or D. I like the discovery more than when you say “I know”, when you say “I am looking for”, that is more interesting to me. What you know is known, so perhaps go from that to another level and start something else.”
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Sources consulted:
https://www.contemporaryand.com/magazines/the-rising-contemporary-african-art-brand-and-the-burden-of-africanness/
http://www.artbaseafrica.org/issue/the-megacity-and-the-noncity/when-lines-become-form
http://www.artbaseafrica.org/artist/uche-uzorka
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