2021

Signed and numbered, verso

Dye sublimation print on aluminum

36 x 24 inches (91.4 x 61 cm)
(Edition of 6 + 2 APs)
$10,000

60 x 40 inches (152.4 x 101.6 cm)
(Edition of 3 + 1 AP)
$20,000

Alawuala is the Earth Goddess in Igbo cosmology, and her name translates literally as “the land which is the ultimate earth.” Birthing humanity and life from her primal womb, she incarnates the spiritual principles of the primordial Igbo High God, Chukwu’s feminine double, Eke-Nnechukwu. With her connection to the primordial feminine, Alawuala prescribes the universal laws of existence which transcend all life, Nso Ala (Laws of the Earth Goddess), and transmits them to humanity in the blackness of her womb. Her layered waist beads speak to her fecundity and control of fertility in all dimensions of life. Her sinuous pose prefigures her zoomorphic terrestrial form as Eke-Nwe-Ohia, the sacred Igbo python.

Work by Mikael Owunna