Usen Okon Obot (Associate Artist and 2021 Artist in Residency with the Residencies for Artists and Writers (RAW) programme, Arts of Africa and Global Souths Research programme, Fine Art Department, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa) holds a BA Art and Design, Fine and Applied Arts. His work has shown at exhibitions, galleries, and fairs among others; FNB Johannesburg Art Fair, Gallery Guichard (USA), Carol Craven Gallery (USA), and Cuyler street Gallery.

His work seeks to interrogate and bring to the fore our inner consciousness that we have or not harnessed to influence our society through his work. The work has evolved from two dimensional presentations in pen, ink, water colour, oils and acrylic presentations of sites, events, objects, emotions, and thoughts to experimentations into common materials. In turn his colours, material and the theme in his recent works has equally changed to reflect and encompass our society's present state, his experiences, and the thinking that he wishes to provoke.

His recent work focused on the exploration into the use and combination of common materials such as Wood, leather, fabric, Perspex, metal, Stainless steel, glass fibre, etc. These stretches across painting, sculpture, installation, and site-specific works. This choice of work materials communicates his concern with issues around gender roles, social injustices - xenophobia, racism, exclusion, domestic violence, and the dangers that underpins the African society.

Last Modified: Mon, 07 Mar 2022 10:35:18 SAST