From The Advocate:
Mikael Owunna’s series “Cosmologies” — the artist’s first solo show in New York and with ClampArt — is an extension of his project titled “Infinite Essence” in which the artist responds to pervasive images in the media of Black people being shot and killed by the police. Owunna has begun a quest to recast the Black body as the cosmos and eternal. Hand-painting the bodies of his models with fluorescent paints, the artist augments a standard camera flash with an ultraviolet bandpass filter in order to pass only ultraviolet light through the lens. Shooting in total darkness, Owunna clicks the camera’s shutter, and for a fraction of a second, these Black bodies are illuminated as the universe, becoming celestial vessels of the divine.
Browse the exhibition “Cosmologies” at ClampArt
Browse all of Mikael Owunna’s work at ClampArt