The rising star’s compelling portraits tell stories of Blackness, empathy, and intimacy.
Ekene Stanley Emecheta started painting at the age of four and never stopped. Now in his late 20s, the self-taught figurative artist, who lives and works in the Nigerian capital of Abuja, has developed a form of portraiture that tells us more about who a person is than it does about how they look.
By covering his Black subjects’ skin with gauzy shades of white, he intends to erase a characteristic that typically limits, categorizes, and defines. "My paintings portray human auras, revealing the subject’s soul," Emecheta explains. "The transparency of the pigment establishes a passage and allows the viewer to pick through into the psyche of my protagonists and their essence – to see past how they look and to focus on what they are doing."
Article by Chloë Ashby - Art Basel
10 May 2023
