UCHE UZORAKA

Born in 1974 in Delta State, Nigeria, Uche Uzorka’s practice incorporates painting, collage, cutting and pasting, charcoal, and ink drawing.

For his intricate ink drawings, first there’s plane paper, and then there’s the intermittent interaction of pen lines, shapes, and forms. The process continues until there are the organic outcomes of the continuous relations between open spaces, covered spaces, and the shapes and forms in between.

Uche intentionally follows the mix of lines to discover sometimes, and sometimes to construct. Here, there’s a fluid marriage between the dualities of adventurous discovery and deliberate construction, so that forms and meanings organically emerge from the intermittent interactions between lines on his plane paper.

This process is so birthed from the intentional abandonment of drawing as a preparatory tool. He parted ways with that foundational intention to allow himself to discover the direct stories of lines. Instead, he pursues the pure power of lines as they mutate into shapes, and shapes as they mutate into forms, and forms into meanings and translations.