May 7–Jul 17, 2021
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1/3: Amma's Womb, 2018, Dye Sublimated Aluminum Metal Print
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2/3: Amma Emerges from His Womb, 2018, Dye Sublimated Aluminum Metal Print
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3/3: Amma Creates the World, Molding the Po, 2018, Dye Sublimated Aluminum Metal Print
Equipped with his camera, an ultraviolet light, and fluorescent body paint, multi-media artist Mikael Owunna sets out to recast the Black body as an incarnation of the eternal cosmos and make visible the divinity inherent in Blackness. His series “Infinite Essence” responds to pervasive media images of Black people being shot and killed by police by articulating an alternative vision of the Black body as immortal and transcendent. Owunna explores this transfigured vision of the Black body in relationship with West African spiritual and cosmological systems, particularly Igbo and Dogon, and each image references divine principles that connect Black bodies of the present across space and time to ancestral conceptions of the universe.
Participating Artist
Mikael Owunna is a Nigerian American multimedia artist, filmmaker, and engineer. Exploring the intersections of technology, art, and African cosmologies, his work seeks to elucidate an emancipatory vision of possibility that revives traditional African knowledge systems and pushes people beyond all boundaries, restrictions, and frontiers.
