More on: In the Studio

The following year I reentered the studio to die. After fifteen days—unable to eat or sleep, my mind desperately trying to give solace to my broken life—I finally collapsed and gave up my life in radical surrender.

It’s interesting to me how quick we are to trust a museum’s account of history simply because it’s presented in a way that feels organized and professional. We gloss over whatever seems unappealing or doesn’t fit into the story we are trying to tell. In many ways, I think fiction can tell a more honest story than what we consider to be the truth.

My art practice also ebbs and flows like the liturgical seasons.

I thought about how, as a society, we haven’t understood this lesson of humility and service: we don’t know what it means to wash one another’s feet, just like we haven’t comprehended the meaning of “love thy neighbor.”

Once you explore the revelations of science—from the multiverse to black holes, dark matter, and quantum physics—there is a realization that in our era humankind is experiencing the birth of a profound new consciousness. All births are painful and contain elements of danger and risk, but births are the necessary threshold for evolving potential.

Graphite’s lack of material complexity also feels honest. Since it’s a simple form of carbon, any mystery in a graphite work is created through process, and that feels like starting from a place of truth.

After the George Floyd murder and protests, painter Askia Bilal began a series called Non-Portraits, exploring his experience of Blackness.

I think now is an interesting time, when the dialogue between religion and science can advance our understanding of the world like a mirror.

I’ve been struck by the immense beauty in the communities I have been a part of, both in Nigeria and now in Canada, as well as grieved by the levels of hardship. The motif of the garden, which I explore in my work, has become a place for me to sit with this contradiction.

I’m crowdsourcing these skills from local weavers and the older women in my family—my grandmothers and aunts—who are now scattered all over the world. They’re sharing stories of various such beds they’d woven or inherited and sending videos and patterns over WhatsApp.