A Different Perspective

As the UK recently announced in a dramatic statement the outsourcing of asylum seekers to Rwanda for processing, migration took the light once again as a serious, and challenging matter of concern on the global stage. While mostly spoken of in the (western) news in terms of threatening vertical North/South interactions, movement of populations predominantly occur horizontally within the global Souths, Africa also remaining the continent providing the smallest amount of migrants worldwide. Two bewildering facts are that both the specific treatment reserved in the European press for African migrants, and the pervasive desire of so many Nigerians to leave the country keep antagonising, further impeding our collective capacity to tackle such intricate questions.

In playful colours and simple forms, Ken Nwadiogbu critically addresses this sensitive subject, inviting us to embrace new perspectives. Using personified cardboard boxes as vivid metaphors of black migrants, he plays around with the parcels’ disposable nature, underlining the dehumanisation process at work in the migration politics. Like boxes, black bodies used to be stacked up in ships and traded overseas. Today, these same bodies are paying fortunes to pile up in dreadful rafts, with the insane hope to reach alive the shore of a continent that keeps fighting them back. A paradox Nwadiogbu interrogates in his installation ‘Journey Mercies’, in dramatic staging, and collective play-out.

But before exploring any given theme, Nwadiogbu’s art remains primarily daring to the audience. Behind its appealing look, it is deeply reflective, proceeding from an intentional will to disturb, trigger, and enrich the viewer’s perspective. In the catchy monochromes trompe l’oeil of his ‘Packages In Brown Skin’ series, he provides us with familiar moments of the typical Nigerian everyday to identify with ; but in the same movement, he stages the irruption of reality with the hyperrealist and fearless glance of a third character peeping from behind the canva through a cut-out silhouette. Full of life, and determined to be seen, Nwadiogbu’s canvases scream out loud for us to notice, and let our mind wander inside a stranger’s shoes.

A Different Perspective is an invitation to get to grips with, and challenge our personal views on life and things. Mixing together a variety of mediums, ranging from the large monochromes illusions of his ‘Packages In Brown Skin’ series, to his playful cardboard boxes installation ‘Journey Mercies’, Nwadiogbu pushes further the limits of his craft with theatrical staging, an experimental audiovisual tribute to Lagos’s lifestyle, a cube sculpture, and the release of dynamic 3D rendered NFTs. With this exciting mix of colours and forms, Nwadiogbu provides us with a unique occasion to step aside, and take a new look at both our collective and individual realities, for “the value lies in the perspective”.