VIRTUES ON DISPLAY - Amarachi Okafor Announces ‘Beauty, Mercy, Kindness and Love’
By Oyiza Adaba | Africa-Related New York
“‘Announcing Beauty, Mercy, Kindness and Love’, is a metaphor and a call for human connection, building up, garnering that strength, which is almost only found in unity.”
AMARACHI OKAFOR/Photo credit: Red Door Gallery, Lagos
Our world today could certainly do with a few doses of these indelible qualities.
For Amarachi Okafor, an Abuja-based visual artist, curator, cultural producer, author and founder of ORIE STUDIO, the last two decades of experimentation have culminated in an interesting array of mediums, materials and techniques. With a BA in Painting, a Masters in Sculpture and also in Curatorial Practice, some of these techniques came to life at Red Door Gallery Lagos, where her 20th anniversary retrospective themed ‘Announcing Beauty, Mercy, Kindness and Love’ is currently holding.
A recipient of numerous awards, prizes and scholarships, including the 2007 UNESCO Aschberg Artist Award and the Commonwealth Connections Artists Award in 2009, Amarachi has worked as a senior curator at the National Gallery of Art, Nigeria, and has also served as a juror in several regional and national competitions including Life In My City Art Festival (LIMCAF).
Her worldview and wide range experience at Universal Studios, Aina Onabolu Studios and New Afrika Studios have propelled Okafor’s works to explore related topics such as environment, unity, nation building, hunger, education etc. With a variety of media, objects, words and events that includes painting, plastic bags, textiles, installations, performance art etc, she continues to promote these global themes that sometimes require audience participation.
In her words, “It has been a very rewarding journey locating methods for pursuing research, audience-participation and collaboration as part of my processes for making art; whilst studying and embedding tangible and visual notions of structure, design and architecture.”
This 20th anniversary retrospective exhibition is a ‘cultural production’ that gives visitors a glimpse at the evolution of Amarachi Okofor’s practice through the years. She has a renewed focus on opening up the conversation about her creative process - from conceptual to creating, curating, research, documenting and archiving - masterful skill sets she continues to build on and share with beauty, mercy, kindness and love.
Video Credit: Orie Studio/CKG Media
PHOTOS OF THE EXHIBITION /Photo credit: Red Door Gallery , Lagos
If you are in Lagos, the exhibition runs from October 29 to November 19, 2022 at the Red Door Gallery, Lagos.
Original Quote
“To announce beauty, mercy, kindness and love is the act of flying over limits. However tiny they may be. The act of erasing bricks and doors. The way to let the words that make us more beautiful flow.”