The Backroom (ongoing) is a series of 3D-rendered black and white images. It is a subset of a larger ongoing series of images collectively titled The Looking Glass, which investigates the remnants of colonialism in my psyche as a Nigerian and a person of Yoruba ancestry. Through this work, I explore the oppositional qualities of speculative fiction, social dreaming, and radical imagination as vehicles for deprogramming and questioning the narratives associated with colonized identities. Set in a fantastical and fictional museum, the project features various elements of Yoruba culture, the most prominent being my depiction of the Ife Head sculptures unearthed from the ground in Ile Ife (most of which currently reside at the British Museum). Playing with the aesthetics of unreality, futurity, and Afro-Surrealism, this series investigates how colonized cultures and identities are interacted with and represented in the (Western) art and museum world. Inspired in part by the Foucauldian concept of a heterotopia, a “placeless place” outside of our traditional world but at the same time a part of it, the project seeks to oppose through construction, leveraging the boundlessness of a place untethered by time or physics.
This project is supported by EQ Bank as part of an ongoing partnership that highlights Canadian digital art practices, featuring commissioned works showcased in print and through expanded digital formats.
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Above: Moni Omubor, Ife, at home, 2024. 3D Computer Graphics. Image courtesy of the artist.
Moni Omubor (b. 1998, Lagos, Nigeria) is a visual artist and designer based in Lethbridge, Alberta. She works with computer generated 3D graphics in consortium with photography to explore the interconnectedness between black diasporic realities and postcolonial Nigerian identity. At the centre of her new media practice is the exploration of speculative fiction and virtual worldbuilding to not only question or document these realities but to also actively reconstruct them by learning from the records of where we’ve been, examining the absurdities of where we are and pulling from the possibilities of where we might go. She holds a B.Sc. in Architecture, an MFA in New Media from the University of Lethbridge and is a member of the Lethbridge based black art collective, We’re Here Too.
This article is published in issue 43.1 of BlackFlash magazine. Get this issue
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