Euronews Culture sat down with Ken Nwadiogbu, a visionary artist who is preparing to showcase his solo presentation 'Journey Mercies: A Migration Symphony' at ART SG later this month.
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00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:03 My name is Ken Mwadiubu.
00:15 I am a multidisciplinary artist from Nigeria.
00:19 I'm now based in London.
00:21 I stayed in Nigeria for quite a while, for 20,
00:25 25 years of my life.
00:27 And back home, you never have the sense of or the idea
00:31 that you're a migrant, because you're home.
00:34 The moment I stepped out of Nigeria,
00:36 that's when I started to realize--
00:38 that's when I started to see that I'm a black person,
00:44 I'm a black man, that I'm an African man.
00:46 And for me, I like to think of where
00:51 I am mentally, socially, politically.
00:54 And I like to address it, talk about it, bring it into my work.
00:59 And so at this time, I see a huge conversation that can come
01:03 from me being an immigrant.
01:05 [MUSIC PLAYING]
01:09 So in Lagos, if you're walking down the road,
01:20 you'd see artworks by incredible artists on the roadside.
01:24 So I think that was basically the earliest introduction
01:30 I had with art.
01:31 [MUSIC PLAYING]
01:34 When I start to paint, I start to think,
01:37 what's the best thing to represent?
01:40 It's the eyes.
01:41 Because in some way, I'm letting people
01:43 see through the painting and see almost the soul of the person
01:49 or the soul of the character I'm trying to represent.
01:51 It almost became like a conversation
01:53 you have with the painting.
01:55 Because when you look at someone eye to eye,
01:56 there's an energy that kind of flows in.
01:58 And the person feels real.
02:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]
02:04 So for the abstract work, I'm always
02:05 trying to play with colors that are
02:08 nostalgic to Africa, to my hometown--
02:12 the red, the blue, the yellow, the green.
02:15 I want to look at it and feel like, oh, yeah,
02:17 that feels like Nigeria to me.
02:19 That feels like Ghana to me.
02:20 That feels like South Africa to me.
02:22 [MUSIC PLAYING]
02:27 Thanks to incredible artists like Vito Ikemeno, Nengi Umuku--
02:33 so many incredible artists who have paved the way for us.
02:37 They've brought African art to a global stage.
02:42 It helps us as upcoming artists to be
02:45 able to tune into that frequency and also
02:48 be part of that conversation, be part of that journey
02:52 that these people have kind of started before us.
02:54 [MUSIC PLAYING]
02:58 (upbeat music)
03:00 [BLANK_AUDIO]