AKWAEKE

ARTIST STATEMENT

Akwaeke Emezi (b. 1987, Umuahia, Nigeria) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Their creative processes are focused primarily on self-portraiture—using text, video, painting, and relics to build around questions of the metaphysics of self as an embodied Igbo deity. 

"The first madness was that we were born, that they stuffed a god into a bag of skin." (Freshwater, 2018)

"i am the most quiet masquerade/rope around my waist, silent raffia [...] the first of all horrific things, the best" (Content Warning: Everything, 2022)

Emezi's practice is deeply rooted in the metaphysics of Black spirit and employs the lens of indigenous Black ontologies to examine embodiment, ritual, and rememory. 

Portrait by Akwaeke Emezi