Anietie Ekanem





Visual Historiography
2019





I became interested how art had long been associated with artifice, illusion and dissimulation, from which The Will To Power As Art signified the paradigm by which to describe a new philosophy of affirmation underpinned by the revaluation of the unrepresentable.Through juxtaposing Ekpe masquerade and Southeastern Nigerian cultural praxes with Western dialectics of truth, I find myself deconstructing notions of representations, presence and the 'other'.
 


Artist Statement

Can you have something that is a fetish and a phobia? Yes, black skin.My practice involves a deconstructive exploration into post-colonialism and queer theory, combining Poststructuralist thought with painting, printmaking and time-based media. Current practical research interests include the dialectics of Black aesthetics and pre-colonial histories, investigating the plurality of concepts and research in art and their manifestations as text and image.



Bio

(b. 1996) British-Nigerian artist calling London & Calabar, home. Standing in the village where my father grew up in Uyo, Southeastern Nigeria, I took a deep breath and smelled carefully curated spices which coated frying meat. I thought to myself: what is home? I glance at a palm tree, then at my cousins playing amongst flora native to only this region. The meat that was frying is now ready, it’s goat — a meat reserved only for special occasions such as weddings, birthdays, or in this instance Christmas. My grandmother in Ibibio, calls out to us. Food is ready. At the table — unchanged since my father’s youth — conversation and stories were exchanged like goods at a Sunday market. There is something poignant about having two homes: here I am, a diaspora debutant. Memory and process act as a source for cultural production. And representations of Blackness are ongoing and infinite.





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