At Arise Bomi Odufunade speaks with rising star Njideka Akunyili:
You recently showed a series of five large-scale collage paintings at Art Statements during Art Basel this year. How was your first art fair experience?More here
It was exciting and overwhelming all at once. Basel is an incredible town and it was absolutely filled with art lovers – artists, curators, critics, collectors, dealers etc. There was a ton of great art on display and it was great to see it all – albeit exhausting.
Wedding Portrait Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Marc Bernier
You once said “My art addresses my internal tension between my deep love for Nigeria, my country of birth, and my strong appreciation for Western culture?" Can you explain what you meant?
The work deals with various themes but the overarching thread is that I’m availing myself of Western painting to seek out a new visual language. In my work disparate elements clash together to give rise to a distinctive yet cohesive whole. The sentence you mentioned refers to an interstitial space of negotiation that I work towards. This in-between/liminal space is referenced a lot in post-colonial discourse – Mary Louise Pratt calls it the ‘contact zone’ and Homi Bhabha calls it the ‘third space’. This transcultural space of constant engagement and appropriation is what I was talking about.
