GREAT HALL
Wunika Mukan Gallery is thrilled to present a captivating series of paintings by Nigerian artists Victor Ubah and Odinakachi Okoroafor for the 2024 edition of RMB Latitudes. Showcasing each artist’s unique and alluring response to the human experience, Wunika Mukan Gallery’s presentation in the International Galleries Platform offers a space for the diverse audience of Johannesburg to reflect upon the ways in which we navigate our relationships with ourselves, others, and the world around us.
Victor Ubah (b.2000) is a Nigerian artist who creates acrylic paintings that merge one dimensional backgrounds with expressively geometric cubist elements. Influenced by the avant garde art movement, Cubism, he reimagines his vibrant subjects as multifaceted personalities that exist in a singular social construct. Through the use of rich natural color palettes and bold textile patterns, Ubah affirms a rich vocabulary of symbolism that offers opportunities to varied thoughts and open dialogues about the immutable and biological society.
Odinakachi Okoroafor (b.1987) is a mixed media artist who lives and works in Enugu state, Nigeria. His practice is an exploration of detailed and delicate lines, inspired by barcodes and lace patterns. Using imagery from his childhood and community as a point of departure, his paintings examine the Black figure through the lenses of daily life and, social and political struggle. Akin to scars — physical and symbolic — the automated barcode lines confront complex histories of the body as a commodity, both historically and in present-day contexts.
The Wunika Mukan Gallery booth aims to provide exhibiting artists with a platform for communal discovery of freedom and emotions. The exhibition represents the gallery’s interest in promoting and positioning established and emerging artists within the contemporary art framework. By exhibiting at RMB Latitudes, the gallery aims to represent diversity and create opportunities for long-term relationships between artists and audiences.
