Ken Nwadiogbu is a contemporalist who has carved a niche for himself in the global art industry. The self-taught multidisciplinary artist is doing his maiden solo exhibition in Nigeria, having exhibited in the United Kingdom and the United States of America. He speaks on this exhibition themed, ‘A different perspective’ that also features installation, paintings and NFTS in Abuja.
You are a trained civil engineer-turned-artist, how was the transition for you?
The transition happened while I was in school. I did not quit school for art because I was not selfish. My parents invested a lot in my education. I couldn’t quit. I didn’t want that stress on my parents and at the same time, I knew that civil engineering was not what I had expected in school. I was not excited to be a civil engineer anymore. But I found so much excitement in drawing and I enjoyed it.
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I came across art as a joke. I used to draw my lecturers and my friends will be laughing about it, my eyes sparkled when I saw another person drawing in UNILAG. People were gathered around him and I was interested and started training. I kept drawing in school and sacrificed a lot of time. I opened my first company and had a manager as an undergraduate and kept drawing. People started paying me 5,000 to draw and it kept increasing. It started from there. I just saw the beauty of what art could do for me and at that time, I was like even if I drew people for the rest of my life and collected money at least I am happy doing it. But it got to a point where I started getting attention from galleries in US, UK.
Some collectors kept telling me to create something for myself and not just draw people, create your own art and let’s come and buy. I started changing my mindset that I can do something for myself and actually make a living from it. I thought I will be broke being an artist but when I started reading and studying, my mind started changing. Culture started becoming valuable to me.
How has your training as a civil engineer influenced your work?
It made me smart. Who knows maybe it is because of civil engineering that I am able to put my works together? There is something about creativity and I see that in most of the young people I train – so many ideas and it can get overwhelming. Civil engineering is very technical and you have to be sure because one mistake could be fatal. You have to be very meticulous about the structure, the design and the construction. I felt like I have those effects even in my works. I was building towers at a point and using boxes to build things and structure things. We constructed a canoe and one day I am going to construct a house.
You don’t play with so much colour in your works, are you afraid of colours?
Colours speak to me in a certain way, red means love to me so in most of my works you see red, it is always about relationships. Each of these colours started speaking to me in a certain way I just went on with it. I used colours to represent certain things. It is a lovely thing. It is looking at life from a filter and that filter represents whatever you are looking at. It works with my work, as an engineer I had to restructure. I started with a lot of colours, trying to paint sceneries but then I started beating down the ideas to find the best way to represent what I am trying to present and this basically is one of my best ways of doing that.
Your works are still evolving?
These cardboard boxes are an evolution of my works, and I might do these colours for a while because I don’t think I have completely dug deeper into the idea. My mentor does say, you don’t just do something and leave. You have to understand what you are doing and understanding it takes time and consistency. You have to keep bringing back that knowledge to understand it. I don’t really completely understand what I am doing yet but the more I keep doing it, painting it; the idea, context and value will start making sense.
Migration is integral to this exhibition, what informed migration as a theme of some of your works?
I travelled to London with other people, my friends. I was the only one that came back. Nobody wants to come back; people are seeking asylum so that they don’t come back. I know Nigeria is bad but I used to laugh at people who make that kind of statement.
If we keep leaving, who will change the country? If I did not paint about Nigeria, how will people understand a new kind of work? How will I be able to influence the next artist? How will I be able to influence peoples’ mindsets or knowledge of what certain things represent and how will I be able to show people what I’ve learnt in London? You need to bring back what you’ve learnt to your home, where you came from, so, that you can develop it. That is what Wizkid and Burnaboy are doing and winning Grammys in London but they are in Nigeria. They can travel but they will still come back. Nigerians, who do not understand that concept, will leave and never come back. Africans try to leave the continent but the migration system is bad. It is either you have cancelled visas or other issues.
For Europeans, it is easier to travel to other countries but here, there are so many restrictions that when we leave, we try as much as possible not to come back. I just saw a story there and a relationship with the slave trade era when people passed the point of no return. Now, nobody is being forced to leave, we are literally using our legs to pass the point of no return through the ship that can cancel our visas or humiliate us to go to the western world. The idea is to go there and not come back. We want to work for them and build their society. Building somewhere you go is not bad but being able to also come back too is also very important.
This is your first solo exhibition in Nigeria, why now?
I did my first solo show in London, the second in the US and the third in London and everything I kept talking about was how we can come together to tackle political crises, and insecurity issues in Nigeria. People have this idea that if you are in Nigeria, you are suffering from oppression, depression etc but there are people doing well in Lagos, Nigeria. There is a social life going on here. There is love, peace, and lifestyle and I saw it from a different perspective from the kind of work I do. This is a different perspective from Lagos.
I decided to create a body of works that just talk about the lifestyle of Lagos. How we love, communicate, come together, lifestyles. How we structure ourselves. How we are happy even in the midst of these political crises going on and I just started this body of work about Lagos. There was no gallery that could allow me to be expressive enough. Most galleries are profit-minded which is fine but at the same time, most works are not necessarily for profit. Building a tower is not profit-oriented. A gallery has to see your vision to be able to tune into your frequency and want to assist you. I came back from London for this exhibition. I didn’t want to do something here without giving my best so we have to make sure everything is on point to see the future and what art can do.
