Untitled
This Little Light of Mine
What Game Changers Look Like
Artist’s Statement:
Afrocentrism and Panafricanism
I am a multidisciplinary self-taught visual artist creating drawings and works that require the fusion 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional art forms, usually fusing fine oil paints and sand in paintings that focus on Afrocentrism and pan-Africanism and also fusing metal cuts on panel and making photo realistic paintings on them that talk about my life story as well as utilizing poetic descriptions for them.
The use of sand is mainly focused on general human history as it is believed that humans were made from sand, but using this to create afro hair and specifically African soil makes it mostly about African descent. Each piece has expressive significance shown by the subject in question and written in poems. I see art differently. I feel it shouldn’t be just seen, I think art should be felt, both mentally and physically even on a 2-dimensional surface. So I introduce a bit of 3-dimensionality to a 2-dimensional painting.
Small Head
The idea of creating smaller heads is not only a method of creating a disproportionate human body but defines the supposed intellectual capacity and capability of dark-skinned race by other races.
It exaggerates the head and hair in opposite ways such that if a silhouette of the figure is created, it looks normal, but if a normal view is created and the body is separated from the head, the hair looks as though it is too big for the head as well as the body.
Every element of these works are put together to describe the idea of Afrocentrism and pan-Africanism. The paintings utilize sand for the hair as a means of defining human origin as well as the beginning of the black race.
Aside from color, the nature of our hair as Africans is another defining factor of our race. Having a thick, curly black hair referred to as afro hair.
These paintings make them so visible and significant as it is a defining factor of our race as well as the unique dark skin tone.
Some non-blacks believe the blacks don’t have sufficient intellectual capacity to compete, and hence the head size. Meanwhile, the inability to meet up and compete is as a result of the inadequate resources and the level of development unachieved in this part of the world.
These expressive paintings describe and capture moments in my life and people close to me as Africans and changes I undergo.
Aluu Prosper is a multidisciplinary self-taught visual artist. He is from Afikpo North, in Ebonyi state, Nigeria. He was born on 14th August 1999 . He grew up learning how to draw through practice and drawing of diagrams of school assignments. At a tender age, he was engrossed by comic art. In 2017, he started creating art again not just for subsistent reasons but for commercial purposes. He began with the pen. Day by day he practiced, observed, and found the works of other artists. He kept improving as a pen artist and gently got to learn about realism with pencils and then gradually with paint. And in 2018, he won the Anbukraft Peace poster competition, which was the first time he attended an exhibition. He kept improving in his art as time passed. In 2019, he participated in the “Life in My City” art festival, a national art competition involving different artists in the country. He made it to the top 100 artists who later exhibited at the grand finale in Enugu, Nigeria. In 2019, he came 3rd at a talent hunt preceded by a singer and a rapper. In February 2020, he became a campus ambassador for TECNO mobile Nigeria, a mobile phone brand, following a talent hunt organized by them.