Luke Agada – SAIC Graduate Exhibition 2023

SAIC SHOWS 2023 GRADUATE EXHIBITIONS

Graduates

SAIC SHOWS 2023 GRADUATE EXHIBITIONS

Luke Agada

Master of Fine Arts in Studio, Painting and Drawing

Graduate Exhibition One (March)

thelukeagada@gmail.com

Luke Agada (b. 1992, Lagos) is a Nigerian artist whose painting practice examines themes of globalization, migration, and cultural dislocation within the framework of a postcolonial world and its impact on neo-cultural evolution.

Luke earned a bachelor’s degree in Veterinary medicine (DVM) during his undergraduate study while practicing as a self-taught artist. He later went on to obtain an MFA in Painting and Drawing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has participated in several group shows in Lagos, Accra, Abuja, Casablanca, etc. His work has been published in several journals and magazines, including The Pinch Journal publication at the University of Memphis. He has also been a recipient of various awards including the Global Warming International Art Prize, AII, New York in 2020; the Janet and Russell Doubleday Award at The Art Students League of New York in 2022; and The Helen Frankenthaler award at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2022.

Luke Agada - You remind me of a song I can’t remember

You remind me of a song I can’t remember, 2022, Oil, photo transfers and gold leaf on canvas, 60 x 46 in.

Luke Agada - Re-settlers (We have come unstuck from more than lands)

Re-settlers (We have come unstuck from more than lands), 2022, Oil, photo transfers and gold leaf on canvas, 60 x 48 in.

Luke Agada - Symphonies of an Epitaph

Symphonies of an Epitaph, 2022, Oil, acrylic, oil stick, photo transfers and gold leaf on canvas, 60 x 48 in.

I am constantly holding on to mementoes as I reflect through painting the transitory collapse of time and space that my practice imbues. The disembodied figures and dream-like grounds references the present moment of transit formed where time and space in a postmodern world intersect to produce complex bodies of difference and identity, the one and the other, past and presence, the inside and outside, center and periphery reflecting the ambiguity of identity formation within the postcolonial framework. It covertly embodies my experience of being alive in a perennial space and time when the politics of representation is of growing importance and a subtle attempt in the avoidance of being labelled as the “One” or the “Other”.

The scholarly texts on critical theories by notable writers such as Homi Bhabha, Edward Said and literary works of writers like Chinua Achebe and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has inspired my investigative approach as a consummate student of history and critical theory in examining the culture of subtle dominance through globalization.

Having grown up in Nigeria; the country with the second largest crude oil reserve in Africa and still ironically amongst the countries with the lowest per capita income, I use the medium of painting and more recently found jerry cans representing trade symbols and movement of raw commodities across borders to interrogate the subject of commoditization of Africa, poverty driven emigration booms and politics of border control.

My work incites me to revisit my personal history as a Nigerian and what it means to have a sense of placement or unique cultural identity as one living in the diaspora.