By Tobijulo Onifade

“Let your art tell stories, we are all human”

Chamberlain Ukenedo is a Mixed media artist, Cartoonist, Art director, and Illustrator. The GTBank, Hard part of Art workshop (which happened late last year) was the first time I came across him and his works and what drew me to him was his stance on Art and creativity. Mr Ukenedo believes in using art to make a difference instead of creating art for art sake. He believes in being educated, informed and using creativity to tell stories. Further research showed me that Mr Ukenedo is someone who not only speaks but backs up his claims with actions and this is evidenced by his ‘Beyond Oil’ and Silent “Voices” exhibitions.

Chamberlain Ukenedo

Beyond Oil was a creative response to the economic downturn circa 2015 due to the oil price drop. The theme was “Realisation” and “Acceptance”, which are the emotions one experiences after the 5 stages of grief. Mr Ukenedo used digital and traditional mediums to produce a colourful collage. The collage was done digitally and printed on canvas, buttons and acrylic were then used to finish off the pieces. This was intentional, his way of saying that he hopes that the new Government (at that time) will not rely solely on old methods to get the country out of the economic mess.

Silent voices, the most recent was inspired by a personal tragedy, the death of his father who had been medically misdiagnosed and passed away. Before he passed, he could not communicate verbally and used other means to do so. This experience made Mr Ukenedo realize that there are people who cannot verbalize their problems and issues and most times if we pay attention we can see that all is not well from nonverbal cues, such as facial expressions and more. This led him to create a body of work, using facial expressions and others as a way of passing nonverbal messages. The medium used for this project (textured paper and board) also helped with the complexity of the subject matter.

There is a difference between talent and skill and while there is no doubt Mr Ukenedo is not lacking in the skills department we can also see that when it comes to talent, he has also got that covered.

To read more about him please visit his Art635 artist page.