TONY
Wunika Mukan Gallery is delighted to announce a solo exhibition by Nigerian artist Edozie Anedu, titled Tony.
Working primarily with oils, acrylics, pastels and recycled materials, Edozie Anedu’s paintings employ elemental forms and figures that verge on the abstract. He references graffiti and mural art traditions to focus his work on popular culture, music and fashion, socio-political ideologies and the human condition.
Two dogs call out to each other. Tony and Ezekiel. Over a human voiceover, they exchange greetings and expletives. There’s no concrete narrative value. Like much of the internet informed by digital natives, the video is like much of what dominated creator culture on the internet. It is its own little bubble, neither looking forward nor back.
Anedu’s Tony takes inspiration not just from the titular viral video but the principles behind it. In today’s world where digital natives will soon become the dominant population, Anedu is creating with his generation at the forefront of his mind. This generation speaks one language: memes.
Meme culture is noted for its wide democratic effect. Easily accessible, easy to disperse, and easy to modify. The effect is that for every state of human experience, chances are high that a meme has been made to embody the feelings. In the TONY series, Anedu attempts that sense of universality. But here, the priority is emotional exploration. Seeking truth through feelings, whatever those feelings may reflect as. The work covers the spectrum from happy to nonchalant to sad. Colors typify emotional states. coral and pink exude the gentle excitement of a beach day in one of the hot and humid Lagos. Yellow resists classification, good in some contexts, in others enhancing the frustration common to those who have to exist under harsh Nigerian conditions.
TONY is embracing all the irrationality, blending the past and present. Tony and his companion pieces invite you to explore the amorphous nature of creating between the barriers of digital and analog realities. Anedu’s tools remain rooted in centuries old instruments. Acrylic, on canvas, a method as old as art history permits. A more modernist tactic of cutting up old works and repurposing them. There are bold confident lines, delineating sections that must not be crossed. Indicative of a discipline to the process. But the contents within say something much more profound.
Most of the pieces present as self-portraits. Collector 1 seems random, funny even. But a deeper investigation teases out a reflection on the autonomy that a digital platform over the past decade has afforded creators. Two good heads will trigger the collective memory of having Nigerian parents comment on their children’s performances. But two good heads is also an invitation to examine the inner tensions between ourselves. Particularly when growing in a world where so much is accessible, but more fleeting for it.
Tony is inviting you to lean into the more instinctive parts of your viewership. Interrogate later, but first, respond.
