Courtesy of the artist and Baert gallery.
Jebila Okongwu
Born in 1975, London, United Kingdom
Lives and works in Rome, Italy
Overview
Jebila Okongwu critiques stereotypes of Africa and African identity and repurposes them as counterstrategies, drawing on African history, symbolism, and spirituality. One of his preferred materials is banana boxes; their tropicalized graphics articulate an ‘exotic’ provenance, much like the exoticization of African bodies from an ethnocentric perspective. When these boxes are shipped to the West from Africa, the Caribbean and South America, old routes of slavery are retraced, accentuating existi...Read more
Selected artworks