I started this and another painting (Njem Anyi) in 2016, thinking about land/sea/time/convergences. By 2019 I was exploring ideas of identity and how our encounters with the world we inhabit shape us. I then worked onto the original painting in 2020 re-discovering my African/Nigerian/Igbo heritage, including re-learning and recovering language memories.
UWA NIILE means All Our Worlds in the Igbo language. Though inspired by landscape and memory, my thinking and rendering moves the painting beyond the bounds of earth. Ideas of identity, relationships, cultures, belonging to place, to tribe, and anchored by the landscapes that shape us. Distance is mutable, macro and micro as we move through time becoming space, becoming memory, becoming..
UWA NIILE (PFHOEM)
Acrylic, recycled yarn, modelling paste, gold leaf and oil pastel on canvas in white wood floater frame; w 126 x h 156 x d 5 cm; 2020