Odera Igbokwe [oh-deh-rah ee-boh-kway] grew up in a childhood full of creativity and play. “Making art is very much something we’re prone to do as children, so for me, that was very much my safe place as a super-expressive creative child. I loved dancing, I loved playing, I loved my sister and me pretending to be Sailor [Moon] Scouts or Power Rangers,” Igbokwe reminisces as they sit in their studio surrounded by collections of their paintings over the years. Now, a professional painter and illustrator, Igbokwe channels that same energy into their work today. “It’s always been about building a life that spans creativity at its core foundation. I never have to think ‘time to get creative,’ as it’s really about constantly flowing in and out of creativity,” says Igbokwe.
While at Brown University at the Rhode Island School of Design, Igbokwe’s childhood influences of cartoons, comics, and video games transferred through to the art they made. They took this inspiration into their concept art: “I was just scratching the surface of the storytelling mediums that I loved growing up and being like, yeah, I’d love to do that but make it my own and feature black people, isn’t that an amazing idea? I think as I rested in my education, I scratched more of the surface. It was more about the storytelling of personal story and identity interwoven with illustration and painting,” Igbokwe describes.
The influence of pop culture nerdy fandom (as described by Igbokwe) is evident in their work, intricately mixed with their exploration of storytelling into Afro-diasporic mythologies and Black resilience. These intersectional themes come from Igbokwe’s focus on identity and otherness. “It’s [about] being a child of Nigerian immigrant parents, a child of diaspora not really knowing where to fit in, of being queer within those spaces, and figuring out gender identity and being like, yeah I’m nonbinary, but I don’t want to take up too much space because male privilege and male passing privilege is a thing,” says Igbokwe.
