A selection of work for grant report 1002-23-5668 by Odera Igbokwe.
Please note some of these works depict the nude figure ranging from the canon of classical figuration, the erotic as an access point to aliveness, and the photographed and transformed figure in dance and movement contexts. Please view with care, discretion, and creative openess.
Funeral Rites
36” x 48". Oils, fabric, and projection on canvas.
A reflection on ancestral traditions for releasing grief, addressing mortality, and diffusing the weight of trauma through embodiment.
Hold the Line (Anambra to Bahia)
A photo series exploring the diasporic connections between Nigeria and Brazil, and how those communities came to Canada.
The fabric featured in Funeral Rites acts a through line to further disperse the collective grief, and acts as a transformational connector. Instead of the fabric being heavy and in need to disperse and shave down trauma, it acts as a lattice of care and explores new ways to express Black Queer technologies, ways of knowing, and creating new access points here in Vancouver.
Kwo Aka, Friends with fire
A series of mixed media paintings, exploring ordinary actions from street life across the globe. Some of these paintings pull references and images from across Canada, Nigeria, and the US to create new images exploring globalization.
Mourning Pages
60” x 48". Oils, paper, ink, nzu (ceremonial Nigerian chalk) on canvas.
A mixed media painting exploring the act of journaling and therapy.
This piece reflects the feeling of being in multiple places and points in time flattening into each other.
The Ouroboros
This oil painting infuses Nzu (an African calabash chalk) into the canvas as a sculptural element. Nzu is often used for protection and cleansing, and this piece was a response to dehumanizing anti-Black language that the artist personally experienced during a solo show opening.
This piece alchemizes the objectification of Black bodies and the Black Phallus, into archetypal creation myths that are simultaneously sacred, cosmic, and also ordinary.
Divination Paintings (2024-2025)
These four paintings are from a series of divination paintings that center metaphors from the collective conscious, personal embodied mythologies, and intersectional magic from the African diaspora. While the origin of the larger series is from a different body of work and earlier grant project, these four paintings specifically reference some of the themes and visual language of the grant proposal.
Agbada Continuum
A mixed media, drawing, dance, and video collage exploring the ideas of loops, light, and transformative layering.
The earliest draft of this work started with improvisational movement and dance with the core theme of capturing and waking into the light.
From there I took stills from the improvisational sessions, drew on top of them with ink and nzu centering the idea of kinetic energy, nervous systems, and star systems.
Then layered those back into a digital video, with the figures dancing and melting back into themselves.
Black like the Nods between my Negritude North Star
Black like the nods between my Negritude North Star is a series that depicts Black intersectional identities in BC. This series was born from the question: What happens if instead of reaching upwards and outwards to the cosmos, I reach inwards and laterally to the very cosmic experience of being in intentional intersectional community.
I would bring each subject into my studio, interview them, draw them as they spoke to me, photograph them, and then create a new painting based on that experience.
Kpakpando Forged from Fire
A series of photos and mixed media drawings inspired by Nzu cleansing dance and herbalist rituals.
Embodied Starlight Explorations
A selection of photos printed out on inkjet printer, hand drawn with ink, scanned, and reprinted.
These were the earliest exploration of drawing on top of the figure with white, before I found a way to bring Nzu into my practice.
Many of these reference the markmaking found in the Nzu cleansing and protection rituals, and thus are the precursor for the visual language developed in all the image exploration created for this grant report.
