Ifeoma U. Anyaeji is a neo-traditional artist (born 1981 in Benin City, Nigeria), who makes distinctive sculptures and installations from discarded bottles and non-biodegradable plastic bags.
Using a technique she has styled ‘Plasto-art’, she decided to take up art full-time, exploring her limitations and transcending her academic conventions in painting and instead exploring her nonconventional “plasto-yarning” technique (an interest stimulated by the constant environmental problems she encountered around her community).
Her work draws upon her Nigerian heritage of hair plaiting, traditional basketry, and fabric-weaving techniques. Using this heritage as a basis, she experiments with mundane materials to create organic sculptures and installations with complex designs, textures and colours that reference architectural forms, recapitulating cultural experiences and dialogue of the human body.
Ifeoma’s works are sculpted to encourage multiple interpretations from the viewer, with the aim to convey the importance of value preservation while, hopefully, stimulating a positive catalytic collective response towards eco-cultural issues. Furthermore, it joins other similar aesthetic practices interested in probing the psychological and material appreciation of African (and minority) cultures in post-colonial contemporary societies.
Her work has received international recognition in the form of fellowships/grants and academic awards; she is both a member and founding member of several professional artist associations in North America and Africa; she has taught at university level in the USA and Nigeria and is a PhD candidate at Concordia University, Montreal.
Ifeoma U. Anyaeji’s work is on display at BALTIC, Gateshead between 24th May and 22nd September.
For further information about the exhibition, please head to Baltic.art.
