Ifeoma Anyaeji: Owu (Threading)
Skoto Gallery New York
Until November 7, 2015.
Owu (detail), 2015.
Artist Statement
Art is a limitless expressive tool of freewill. Therefore, its visual thoughts can serve to remind us that the limitation of one’s imagination is a limitation to one’s growth. And art devoid of optimistic imagination is art with limitations. As an artist, I have always had an interest in producing artworks that communicate with and integrate elements of and from my environment. This manifests in my choice of medium and style of rendition. My work is about the transitions of culture, the concept of recycling and material reuse, as a review of our cultural attitude to the ideology of product newness, value and the expiration date.
Made in Shina, 2015.
Through my works, I reflect on cultural descriptions of value and value systems drawn from elements that reflect social abnormalities. I am intrigued by process and the use of non-conventional materials as visual medium, like sand, wood and plastic, using the language of lines to transgress meaning and form and to replicate my memory of nature, the social and political. I am interested in the art of Up-cycling is to create a “new value” for that assumed to have lost its “newness”.
When a king dies another replaces him, 2015.
My concept of material reuse through the transformation of an object’s physical state, as an alternative to recycling by mechanized chemical disintegration, is to echo the environmental implication of accumulation and the extensiveness of a politicized archaeology of modernity’s consumptive system. This I conceive by creating a complexity of sculptural forms that allow for multiple interpretations of the functionality of an object after it has been consumed. I envisage a multiplicity of uses while retaining the physical state of the discarded object. I choose to work with conventional and non-conventional materials to create flexibility in my creation of forms.
The Starter, 2015.
The most recent of my non-conventional media are, two of the main global environmental pollutants, discarded plastic bags and bottles. I chose these pollutants based on their popularity in my home country Nigeria. With these I visually express the narrative of a domestic object’s possible transition from discarded to the aesthetic or functional – the transition from redundancy to utility. This style of art I have called Plastoart, coined from the words plastic and art.
When a king…….(detail), 2015.
The forms are conceived using the traditional craft skills of loom weaving and Nigerian hair Thread braiding (Threading) to manipulate the initial physical structure of my chosen medium. Braiding and weaving the plastic bags and up-holstering the plastic bottles with the bags enables me to conceive a complexity of sculptural forms that allow for a multiple interpretation of the potential functionality of these discarded mediums. With the spiraled patterned, fabric-like and organic forms I am able to make three and two dimensional forms. Most of the forms I make reference household furniture, architectural structures and fabric, like tables, chairs, wall partitions, tapestry and chair upholstering fabric.
Installation view, 2015.
My style reflects the environmental and is art for social engagement – an art for recreating economic value for these wastes. Thematically, I express an interplay of metaphorical themes drawn from traditional folklore, fashion, music and poetry. Used plastic bags may be tagged an environmental pollutant but to me it is a rich viable resource that must be exploited beyond its pre-designed use, even by an artist.