With every piece of art, I produce a story, an opportunity to provide history, a new voice, and perspective for my audience. I believe in using my artistic gift as a conduit to share the stories of people and places living in different societies and cultures with a new context. My practice engages in a critical commentary of the past to learn and unlearn how history shapes our understanding of the present and, in turn, impacts our perception of the future. I see and understand the world through people—their faces, expressions, and gazes allow me to represent the often overlooked faces of Black African immigrants across the diaspora.
Nigerian newspapers shaped my early knowledge about history and race, as well as stories from my great-grandparents. Those images were rich, powerful, and heroic. They embodied so much power while influencing how I see any black man or woman losing so much of their story, which must be investigated and how we are seen by the world today. Having so much rich culture and history but dismantled and kept away for a long time led me to create elegant iconic images that show the rich practices to tell the world about the future.
My art takes on reconstructing the lost story, documenting the ideals of our history. Stereotypes and myths that have been created are challenged. I create a dialogue between the ideas of inclusion, culture, dignity, and consumption. And subjectivity by addressing the left-out cultures and traditions of any black race by challenging the history and untold stories, making space for the black race to tell the world about their story and history.
My work abstracts the hyper-realistic through layering and reconfiguration of the image through-line. My process includes history and socially related images of black people. They are manipulated with paint or charcoal to get the desired result about the topic and bold hybrid portraits. I am interested in giving space to marginalized voices and how the world sees race, shows passion, asks questions, hope, and weakness. The men and women who populate my works have been pushed to the second class, and hold bad images, however, they have stories, and a history society must acknowledge. They still strive with all these issues around them.