In their exhibition This Body of Mine, Odera Igbokwe explores the veil between physical and spiritual figuration. These works question and distill the embodiment of ancestral technologies with contemporary mundane tasks through the lens of the Black Queer body.

Resilience. Wonder and Awe. Repression. Pleasure. Invisibility and Hypervisibility. These paintings draw a throughline between the expectations and the spirit-led realities of Black and Queer intersections.

This Body of Mine reflects and kaleidoscopically embodies the nature of diaspora, and the loss, reclamation, and alchemy that occurs as a result.  Some of these works assert embodiment, euphoria, and expression as a birthright. While the new works Funeral Rites and Mourning Pages draw upon personal heirlooms, routine, and ritual to reify the power of generational curses and generational blessings. These multi-media pieces ask the viewer to meditate on the transference of memory through the senses and the ability to exist in multiple planes at once. This Body of Mine asserts that the Black Queer body is not simply a vessel to hyperpersonal lived experiences, but rather a fulcrum and progenitor of universal ancestral technologies and embodied futurities.

MEDIUMS

oil, fabric, acrylic and projections on canvas

ARTIST BIO

Odera Igbokwe (they/them) is a painter and contemporary artist located on the unceded and traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. Odera was born in 1990 of Igbo parents who immigrated to the lands of the Lenape people. As a result they are constantly excavating, responding, and envisioning in spite of the fractures that occur via diaspora. Their artwork is an exploration of storytelling through Afro-diasporic spiritualism, Black resilience, queer embodied transformations, redefining the archetypal hero’s journey, and how that relates to contemporary intersectional communities.

Odera received their BFA in Illustration from Rhode Island School of Design in 2012, while studying West African Dance Movement and Theatre Arts at Brown University with New Works/World Traditions. Upon graduation, Odera worked as an artist in Brooklyn, NY where they exhibited work at The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, held their debut solo exhibition at Sehiii Gallery in 2017, and created gifted works for the private collections of Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, Oumou Sangaré, and Solange Knowles. As an illustrator Odera collaborated with clients such as Scholastic, Blizzard, Holt Renfrew, Twitter, Patreon, and CBC.

Upon moving to Vancouver in 2017, Odera gradually transformed from illustrator to painter and contemporary artist. Their first major exhibition was participating in Vancouver Special: Disorientations and Echo at the Vancouver Art Gallery (2021). This exhibition featured “The Volcano” and “The Breath of Life” which asserted the power of communal reckoning, resilience, and Black rage as a love language in response to the George Floyd protests of 2020. Since then Odera has gone on to participate in exhibitions with Museum of Anthropology at UBC, Surrey Art Gallery, The SUM Gallery, and has been a multiple time recipient of Canada Arts Council grants and BC Arts Council grants. Their most recent work weaves together ancestral spiritual technologies, reindigenization processes, and interdisciplinary art forms with painting and contemporary figuration.