From Fred Ezeh, Abuja
A Nigerian Artist, Bubu Ogisi, has been selected to be on cover page of a renowned and reputable United States based art and dialogue magazine, Skew magazine.
Bubu Ogisi, the creator of IAMISIGO, a contemporary wearable art and home textiles brand based between Lagos, Nairobi and Accra is also a co-founder of the art collective hFACTOR.
Her work primarily focused on how fashion and textile can keep history alive and build a better future by preserving techniques and expression.
Editor-in-Chief, Skew magazine, Nneka Jackson, in a statement, explained that Skew magazine is an experimental art and dialogue magazine published yearly by the award-winning artist collective and production incubator Level Ground.
She explained that this year’s magazine featured the curatorial theme “Black Abundance” and also featured artists across the Black Diaspora.
She also explained that the front and back covers of SKEW 03//Black Abundance featured striking photographs captured by South African photographer, Jesse Navarre Vos, and creatively directed by the Nigerian artist, Bubu Ogisi.
She said: “This edition examines lost historical stories and applies them to garments, environments and fibres as a form of silent protest to post and neo-colonialism.
“In addition to that, this work focuses on decolonizing the mind, thoroughly, by questioning and engaging a variety of thoughts in relation to classism, religion, gender, traditions, symbols and scripts, tribes and magic, as well as questioning inferiority in blackness.
Meanwhile, Bubu, in the statement stressed the importance of collaboration, saying, “It’s important to continuously and consistently work with local artisans within and around Africa by merging different ideas from different but yet very similar cultures to expose the world to the unlining artisanal secrets in Africa.
“Through collaborations across different cultures, creatives create awareness around Africa’s significant and unique contributions to the global fabric of culture and art.”
She said that the unique thing about SKEW 03//Black Abundance is that all revenue derived from magazine sales will be shared equally among the contributing artists and the editorial team, as an effort to create a sustainable creative ecosystem for Black artists to be supported in their creative practices.
In addition to that, she said that creativity is the path of liberation: “I guess the only way a free world would ever exist is from an immensely creative community, a community that isn’t for competition but for co-existential unison through creativity.”