Civilized

The image represents how the quest for becoming or appearing “civilized” by dressing formally is only a reflection of the dominance of the western culture. While trying to understand the subject of identity and how it relates to Africans in contemporary times, I decided to create these series of conceptual images in an attempt to […]

artiste Olalekan Okeowo Emmanuel Lagos, Nigeria

Olalekan Emmanuel Okeowo is an emerging fine art and documentary photographer based in Lagos Nigeria, he has a background in mass-communication and public relations. Olalekan started professional photography five years ago as a freelance and commercial photographer. He is an alumnus of The Nlele Institute and a mentee to Canon Master Gary Knight. Lekan has […]

Read more
Publish date
12 X 20 Inches Canvas size
878 Views

The image represents how the quest for becoming or appearing “civilized” by dressing formally is only a reflection of the dominance of the western culture.
While trying to understand the subject of identity and how it relates to Africans in contemporary times, I decided to create these series of conceptual images in an attempt to highlight some of the challenges I encountered while trying to understand my identity and how the subject relates to other young Africans of our present time

I also seek to explore the impact of colonialism and western influence. The long-lasting influence of colonialism on our language, beliefs, culture, religion and mode of dressing cannot be over-emphasized. The African cultural heritage is silently going into extinction. For instance, our native language is currently referred to as vernacular in our own land while the English language takes precedence. Even in our very hot environment, we have enforced suit, shirt, tie and trousers/skirt as the official dress-code or what we term as formal, as against our traditional attire which could also be sewn smartly. Several African children born to parents who reside “abroad” would rather claim to be citizens of Western nations rather than their native land, some of them do not even know anything about their root.

In this project, I also tried to highlight the subject of perceived and imposed identity, how a person’s skin colour affects how they are being treated and perceived and how it implies racism. Consequently, some dark-skinned persons would do anything possible to change their skin colour in order to gain acceptance.

Related artworks