I realised the possibility of becoming an artist when I started working at a space called Stranger Lagos —a boutique, café, and artist hub in Lagos. Though it no longer exists, it was a sanctuary for young, curious, like-minded people. The owner, Yegwa Ukpo, was passionate about creative collaboration and dialogue. It was there that I developed my first collaborative projects, shaped my artistic philosophy, and found the voice my work now carries. In Nigeria, spaces for community and creativity are rare, which made Stranger Lagos feel especially significant. After a series of collaborations and smaller shows between 2015 and 2017, I finally felt confident that art was the path I wanted to pursue.

Tulbagh is extremely different from Lagos, just even physically. And landscape wise, you don’t have as much nature as I experienced here. I spent a lot of time just isolated with my thoughts. In Lagos you have a lot more stimuli. So even when you’re not doing anything, something is bound to happen. You’re often provoked to action. Whereas here, I’ve had to provoke that action myself.

It was very ‘tree-centric’. I’ve been considering trees a lot more than usual. Just looking at them, thinking about what they’re feeling and how they’re surviving the winter. I believe in this concept of energy transfer. The trees have been witness to me now. And then they will bear witness to the next person who exists in this space.

During my time here, I would be walking around, and I would grab some stones, and some feathers. And sometimes I would think, what am I doing? Why not? Why not pick up that little branch that you think is interesting. And I think at least for me, that’s what the creative process is, right? It’s allowing yourself to be in conversation with things that people might not usually converse with and for that to be meaningful. You’re moving through space with intention, whether it’s making it beautiful, making it valuable, making it ugly, but you’re moving with intention and consciousness. You are actively giving value to that moment.

It came from a simple question, why are you doing what you’re doing? What informs this drawing of a landscape? And why is that relevant? I’ve developed these scripts to explore these questions, but also as mark-making expressions. It’s very automatic and intuitive. The only process that I’ve developed around them is counting the sequences. Sometimes I find that I’m repeating certain gestures. I tend to use it as the textual elements of the work. Sometimes I use it in my work to represent a language that all the imagined elements in my system are speaking and communicating through. I don’t feel like I need to translate it into anything that’s operating within our understanding or knowledge base. 

I think we often forget that we are part of the systems that we are already participating in, like somebody else thought of this and not the greater value in a sense, right? They’re just aware that they can do that. The language system comes from the awareness of the fact that I can think, and therefore I can make. 

I’m not really interested in the mystery of art. Like some superstitious thing that was revealed to me in a dream. I feel like everything is very real. What I do know is that there are markings on the surface. And I do know how lines come to be. You imitate your environment, and then you break down complex systems into singular things. So dots, dashes, and then you create repeated movements. Something comes of that, and meaning begins to build as your experience expands, as your process expands. I understand that this process I’m going through is similar to what a craftsman experienced in 1500s Igboland, and that grounds me.

We often elevate those we admire in history. We have this concept as people that to think of something elevated, you must be smaller, and that thing must be bigger. But you have to think of yourself not as this small thing, but as a part of how your history is generated, and how the future will look back at you. 

I think that’s something that we often ignore, especially being Africans and Nigerians, where there’s a lot of Westernised influence - it makes us forget that our people were thinking philosophically, religiously, scientifically. It appeared in different ways and was undocumented for a large point of time, but doesn’t negate the fact that it was happening. 

My ancestors were doing this kind of abstract work, which they imbued with meaning over time, it just didn’t become meaning immediately in the moment that it was born.

I have tried to create opportunities for things to be experienced in multiple ways, because that makes me feel expansive. Being able to create that awareness in my body and mind is what helps me think outside of whatever system or context that I’m existing in. That curiosity about the expansiveness of things is reflected in my choice of different media. When I’m translating an idea into drawings, I say to myself ‘let’s try pencil on paper, what happens when I translate them into linocuts or sculpture?’ things begin to have a different meaning, and those decisions change the context of what I’m experiencing. 

Within this body of work, the medium is reflective of the messages I’m trying to convey. I use fabric a lot as in ancient Igboland we used to translate a lot of our symbols through the actual clothes that we used to wear. I like the idea that art and symbols become this functional thing.

With print, I relate to signs and advertisements, and the idea of propaganda. If the masquerade comes with its own messaging, how is it being transmitted in a contemporary way? Print-making becomes this repetitive thing that you can share across different spaces. I am drawing on those contemporary ideas, associating them with ancient things, and sharing it with the world.

I’ve been making zines for a very long time. They are little tiny books of experimentation to just explore my thoughts and ideas. Within this context, I was thinking about the masquerade as an activist, and performance as a form of protest. Zines have that history as being a material which people have used to communicate activism and protest. 

There was a group of artists in Nigeria, in the ‘70s to ‘80s, who were students at the University of Zaria. Many of them are not alive today. But there are two main people, Bruce Onobrakpeya and Uche Okeke. These artists were really intentional and looked at cultural and traditional references as a starting point, and mixing contemporary practices with them. They actually had a whole term for it; natural synthesis. 

Bruce Onobrakpeya was doing a lot of work about folklore and mythological elements bringing them into print form. The idea is to take something ephemeral and translate it into print form, allowing it to be widely shared and propagated. I learned the linocutting process in his workshop, which is a project that he has been running for the last 26 years in Agbarha-Otor Delta State called the Harmattan workshop. 

I’ve been looking at Igbo cosmology, which is basically studying the system of symbols, spiritual and traditional practices in Igboland, as a way of understanding my own personal identity. A big part of our cultural practices are masquerades, which represent entities that are caught in between the spiritual and the physical world. They become executors of justice or power, but are also festive and playful. 

The masquerade is something that is experienced in public space. This is going to be witnessed in some kind of way. So who is it representing and why it’s going to be relevant to who is witnessing it? Something that has been on my mind lately is the social and political context of Nigeria. We have gone through a very, very tumultuous year. The currency rates, fuel prices and food costs are the predominant issues

I listened to the inaugural speech of our recently elected president. What I found interesting was his concept of the Nigerian ideal, in contrast with the Nigerian reality. 

The voice of the masquerade represents how I perceive the current situation in Nigeria. But, I didn’t want it to be limited to just this moment. I wanted to explore Nigeria as a broader concept—an evolving environment that has shaped, and continues to shape, Nigerians throughout history and into the future.

Otimkpu basically means cry, or someone who eulogises another person. And the idea of a eulogy is a praise given to someone who has died, or a great man or someone who's alive. It’s like a song that comes before the person, and I enjoyed the idea of using poetry to honour something, but also as this masquerade who is communicating something. 

So now to the motif of that face with the mouth that’s permanently open. It looks like it’s within a cry, or like something is being communicated out of it. And that’s how I associate the meaning to the name.

I started thinking of Otimkpu as a voice translating the experiences of Nigerian society—its social and political realities—through performance. The question then became: how is Otimkpu receiving these messages, and how is it processing its emotions? This led to the idea of a nervous system or support system. The stimuli that Otimkpu responds to come directly from Nigeria, the environment from which it draws its energy.