Meet November Artist of the Month: Odera Igbokwe

The Ori, The Connector from the collection Dance of the Summoner, reclaiming and alchemizing Nigerian and Afro-diasporic deities, orishas, and sacred traditions.

Odera Igbokwe [oh-deh-rah ee-boh-kway] grew up in a childhood full of creativity and play. “Making art is very much something we’re prone to do as children, so for me, that was very much my safe place as a super-expressive creative child. I loved dancing, I loved playing, I loved my sister and me pretending to be Sailor [Moon] Scouts or Power Rangers,” Igbokwe reminisces as they sit in their studio surrounded by collections of their paintings over the years. Now, a professional painter and illustrator, Igbokwe channels that same energy into their work today. “It’s always been about building a life that spans creativity at its core foundation. I never have to think ‘time to get creative,’ as it’s really about constantly flowing in and out of creativity,” says Igbokwe.

While at Brown University at the Rhode Island School of Design, Igbokwe’s childhood influences of cartoons, comics, and video games transferred through to the art they made. They took this inspiration into their concept art: “I was just scratching the surface of the storytelling mediums that I loved growing up and being like, yeah, I’d love to do that but make it my own and feature black people, isn’t that an amazing idea? I think as I rested in my education, I scratched more of the surface. It was more about the storytelling of personal story and identity interwoven with illustration and painting,” Igbokwe describes.

The influence of pop culture nerdy fandom (as described by Igbokwe) is evident in their work, intricately mixed with their exploration of storytelling into Afro-diasporic mythologies and Black resilience. These intersectional themes come from Igbokwe’s focus on identity and otherness. “It’s [about] being a child of Nigerian immigrant parents, a child of diaspora not really knowing where to fit in, of being queer within those spaces, and figuring out gender identity and being like, yeah I’m nonbinary, but I don’t want to take up too much space because male privilege and male passing privilege is a thing,” says Igbokwe.  

Mami Wata from the collection Dance of the Summoner, reclaiming and alchemizing Nigerian and Afro-diasporic deities, orishas, and sacred traditions.

Igbokwe’s art aims to allow those who feel othered to feel seen: “I recognize more and more that what I value the most is the intimate connection of feeling seen between a viewer [of my art] and myself.”

The process of creating these themes within their work is an emotional journey. Though, it’s evident that a joyful resilience comes through many of Igbokwe’s paintings. Through earthy, rich, and vibrant colour palettes to the embodied movement in the stillness of a painting, Igbokwe creates magic with each stroke of their brush.

When asked what their superpower is, Igbokwe pauses to contemplate. From someone who has delved deep into comic multiverses, the question seems daunting. However, when it comes to Igbokwe’s artwork, they know exactly what magic they bring: “It’s treating all these different aspects and very different intersectional energies with respect and dignity to create something that is both old and new. With a lot of my work, I like having the abstract feeling of not necessarily knowing where or when you are, and sometimes I think my work is envisioning the future. But, a lot of the time, it also looks like a very distant past. Merging those things, whether it’s time or cultures across the African diaspora in one cohesive piece, is what makes me excited to create.”

Cortex Prime, illustration by Odera Igbokwe

Burning Pyre from a collection of illustrations for "Snow Globe Skyline".

Since moving to Vancouver in mid-2017, Igbokwe had just started getting acquainted with the art scene before the COVID-19 pandemic began, and racial unrest grew with Black Lives Matter protests erupting in North America.

From this lens, Igbokwe has received some of the most attention and “success” (as they use their fingers in quotations) in their whole career. “On one hand, it’s like, oh yeah, thank you so much for supporting me and looking at my work and listening, but on the other hand, it almost feels like a blood sacrifice. Oh, you’re paying attention because you’re finally recognizing all these things that we’ve been saying for hundreds of years.”

Igbokwe refers to their intuition to ensure that they are authentically moving through the world: “It’s important for me to really have clarity and purpose and not necessarily respond immediately to the moment and know that as I’m creating, I’m thinking of a lifetime of a body of work, as opposed to ‘how do I respond and capitalize off this terrible thing right now at this moment.’”

Illustration for "FIYAH: Magazine of Speculative Black Fiction" Issue 16: JOY (Fall 2020 Edition)

During times like these, Igbokwe finds their work to be “foundational, generative, and healing. It kept me from spiralling off the deep end too much. I feel like productivity can be such a myth and toxic thing, but when productivity is linked to just creating new things, then I have to recognize that also brings me joy and is a foundational part of who I am.”

So, what’s next for Igbokwe? Recently, they just completed their Black Crown collection, which is a series of drawings, paintings, and mixed media studies exploring the styles, textures, and functions of Black hairstyles across the African diaspora. They are currently working on a new collection to be released close to February and have signed four different gallery shows in 2021. 

Keep up with Igbokwe on Instagram and visit their website here.