#project statement

“Esoteric Africana” is an art installation and exhibition inspired by wizard tropes, high fantasy, and my own mixed race lineage. It would take the form of several art pieces with the main focus on the installation aspect. Each piece serves as an ode to my own art journey and my experience experimenting in different mediums. 

In Esoteric Africana we walk into the lair of Oburogi, a wizard and diviner from another world in another time. One similar to ours but brimming with magic, monsters, and mysteries. 

Oburogi has pinned to the wall scrolls of three great creatures, each unique but familiar. Popo Bawa, a giant bat creature that sucks the souls of man in the night. Lukwata, a grand serpent-like dragon that stalks the great lake. And the mythical Nyeupe Kudu, the tall white antelope with glowing eyes and three horns. Each holds a key ingredient to the key to eternal life.

The garments of Oburogi sit in the room, a robe and staff adorned with stars and sacred symbols.

I’ve decided to go through my record collection.

Not in a dramatic, purge-everything way. Not in a “minimalism challenge” way. Just… intentionally.

Over the years, my collection has grown. Some records were carefully chosen. Some were impulse buys. Some I’ve never even properly listened to. That feels ridiculous to admit, but it’s true.

I’m going to pull one record at a time, listen to it front to back, and decide if it still belongs in my life.

I’m not trying to be ruthless. If I love it, it stays. If I don’t, I’ll consider selling or trading it.

I don’t want shelves full of records I “should” like, or bought because they looked cool, or because they were limited pressings. I want a deliberate collection.

Some posts will be quick. Some might be longer. I’m not a music critic, and I’m not pretending to be one. This is just me listening more closely to what I already own.

This is for me, but I'm glad you're here.

When I initially started exploring the theme of play, I had the idea of exploring gender norms and the rules of society. 

As time went on, I found that I gravitated towards exploring masks and personas. 

I investigated this idea through looking at physical concealment and metaphorical concealment - physically wearing a mask and putting up a mask and hiding who you truly are by creating a persona.

As time went on and I started to look at society’s masks, I realised that the biggest mask today is a beauty filter and I further analysed this by putting my image through “plastic surgery” and enhancing my image to look like today’s idea of perfection.

I focused my project on the idea of distortion, particularly of the female identity. I examined artists who dealt with themes of distortion such as Jean-Jacques Piezanowski, Cindy Sherman and looked to Jessica Rabbit’s character design to help me in my development of this project.

When I first began this project I didn't know where to start. Story was such a broad thing, I didn't know where to look. I began to look at quotes that I had saved and from there my project began.

I based my project on the quote "someone has to leave first. This is a very old story, there is no other version of this story" by Richard Siken. This quote really resonated with me.

From this quote I wanted to create the story of me and my dad. I wanted to explore my memories of him and what he taught me.

For the Story Project, I chose to investigate the idea that a city tells a story to a person who is walking through it. As so much life passes through a city, each street corner, apartment block or shop front has it’s own story. I also wanted to explore the idea of dreams as stories we tell ourselves and the feeling of being in a familiar place in a dream but it is made surreal in someway. I decided that these two ideas could work together and that they would provide me with enough material to base my six look line-up on. 

I expanded these themes by going out and gathering primary sources through photographing Galway city, where I am currently in Lockdown. I photographed areas that didn’t have many people around, trying to focus on the architecture and colour of the city. I wanted the photos to have a dream-like quality, almost like a person’s memories of a place that could feature in a dream. 

From my photography I designed looks that tried to encapsulate the feeling of the city while maintaining a slightly surreal quality. I put an emphasis on using my photography as prints on fabrics for the looks, while also allowing the shapes and colours that I found in the photography to inform the looks. For this project I wanted to challenge myself, so I decided to design the looks digitally, which is a medium I had not previously explored. This allowed me more scope in what I could design, and gave me more room to play with detailed prints or to take colours directly from my photographs for the palette. 

When I began exploring this movement project I wanted to look beyond physical movement and find a different concept of what movement can represent. I found myself very inspired by colour and patterns throughout my general work. Below are my statements for each elective.

Painting

For movement in painting, I worked with clutter and isolation which I think is really suitable for times like these. Everyone is stuck inside their homes. So when it came to primary sources all I really had was what was in my home. This inspired me to paint a room setting or investigate these different habitats. My initial idea was clutter and the routine people have within their personal spaces and how these spaces help a person develop and grow. But later I introduced movie scenes that i could paint that reminded me of this idea. The scenes were always heavy on overgrowth and focused on nature. Which was another section of my mindmap, growth.

Ceramics

For ceramics, I was heavily focused on colour, patterns and shapes. There was nothing really deep to my ideas for this elective I was just in love with the colour and how I could use it in patterns. I was mainly influenced by vibrant primary colours. I also spent a lot of time at the beginning working with mark-making which felt very freeing for design. This was my favourite elective even though I was new to this type of art. Its something I really want to improve at.

Sculpture

At first, like ceramics, I was working with colours, bits of physical movement and videos of movement around us. I also worked with clay creating simple pieces that showed movement in their form. But with time my ideas shifted quite a bit. Where I moved onto the movement of life and how the things we experienced in our childhood have formed us as adults. This idea became the Y2K trend, as those of us from my generation grew up watching these shows. Which lead me to work with these popular characters in an abstract form, instead of their regular appearance through clay. I also spent some time working with cross stitch and embroidery where focused on patterns and an odd character.

This is my Project statement for my brief which was Movement.

My electives were:

Photography, Film and Video

Animation 

Graphic design

For this Project is was focusing on restriction in isolation.

I explored this throught looking at myself while stuck in my house during the covid restriction in place around the time this project began. The materials i used are those i had handy, the locations of photos for example are all locations in or around my house.

To navigate throught all my posts below i will have clickable links for each elective individually. 

#graphic design elective 

#photography elective

#animation elective

This blog is an exhibition space for selected works from the Juntabot project.

The images and short films presented here explore apathy, consumerism, and the end of the world as a background condition rather than an event. Collapse appears slowly, quietly, and often comfortably. Nothing explodes. Nothing is resolved.

The work is AI-assisted and concept-driven. AI is used as an instrument, not a subject.

Posts here are curated selections. Some works stand alone. Others belong to larger series archived elsewhere.