Enjoy a virtual tour through Ken Nwadiogbu’s “Ubuntu” and Fumi Nakamura’s “Look Toward the Future, but Not So Far As To Miss Today.” Now on view through March 27th, click here to schedule a visit to the gallery.
Please visit the following link to explore our virtual tour: https://players.cupix.com/p/VL87Nzlh
Virtual tour courtesy of Birdman Photo
Thinkspace presents a photo tour through Ken Nwadiogbu’s “Ubuntu” and Fumi Nakamura’s “Look Toward the Future, but Not So Far As To Miss Today“. Now on view through March 27th, click here to schedule a visit to the gallery.
Photos courtesy of Birdman
KEN NWADIOGBU – Ubuntu
FUMI NAKAMURA – Look Toward the Future, but Not So Far As To Miss Today
On view: March 6, 2021 – March 27, 2021 | Schedule your visit here.
EXCERPT FROM KEN NWADIOGBU INTERVIEW
What is the inspiration behind this latest body of work? What themes were you exploring?
These works were created between 2020 to 2021. The question was: what did it feel like to be Nigerian during this time and what do I think we can do to make it better.
I experienced a lot of threatening events around me and could connect it with what was happening around the world. The hatred, the war, division and violence. I got really interested in making direct statements through my works concerning this. This gave rise to UBUNTU, an African philosophy made popular by Late Nelson Mandela. The philosophy of togetherness. “I am because we are”. I believe there’s a lot of good we can do if we are United.
Full interview here
EXCERPT FROM FUMI NAKAMURA INTERVIEW
What is the inspiration behind this latest body of work? What themes were you exploring?
I’ve been learning and trying to incorporate my own culture into my work more. I moved to the United States when I was eleven. I stopped learning Japanese language, culture and history since then, instead, I tried to focus on learning English and American culture to fit in. Growing up in the United States made me question my existence, ethnicity and culturally more, and I was often being asked “which country is home to you?,” which troubled me a lot.
Now I am in my mid-thirties, looking back on all the work I made and working through many hours of psychoanalysis, that question no longer troubles me anymore, but it rather made me curious about my own existence, concentrating on being alive and what to look forward to in the future.
Full interview here
Thank you to Juxtapoz for featuring Ken Nwadiogbu’s ‘UBUNTU’ in their Spring 2021 issue. ‘UBUNTU’ opens today, Saturday, March 6th and you can schedule your visit to the gallery to see his work in person here.
Pick up the Spring 2021 issues at your favorite book/magazine retailer or online.
Take a tour inside the studio of Ken Nwadiogbu as he prepares for his upcoming exhibition ‘UBUNTU’
March 6, 2021 – March 27, 2021
Thinkspace Projects is pleased to present Nigerian-born multidisciplinary artist Ken Nwadiogbu’s first solo exhibition in the United States. ‘UBUNTU’ is an ideology of humanity, often translated as “I am because we are.” In twenty new hyperrealist works, Nwadiogbu investigates representation through a focal-point of eyes as a means of discovering and revelation.
By recreating his own realities as a young Nigerian, his work projects the experiences encountered by black lives around the globe. Nwadiogbu invokes a humanist connection to the ongoing issues of police brutality, racism, xenophobia, culture conflict and shock. Working with charcoal and acrylic he creates a hyperrealist narrative that demands socio-political thought and discourse, bringing the ideology full circle by emphasizing an understanding that we are more alike than different.
Societal tendencies drive Nwadiogbu’s work and his commitment to technique amplifies the intention behind every mark. Nwadiogbu explains, “I implore us to consider our society as spaces we occupy and challenge us to think, in a larger context, about our role in these spaces, what we can do to influence these spaces and how we react to these spaces, because I believe, it is only then that we can discover the true meaning of Ubuntu.”
Video by Birdman
