Personhood by Unimuke J Agada

PERSONHOOD.

UNIMUKE J AGADA, ILLUSTRATOR, SELF-TAUGHT, UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS, (ALUMNI).

My work deals a lot with the dialogue between body and space. My style leans on this dialogue so densely that often, the two are interdependent -- there is no personhood without its environment, and there is no environment without personhood. At a glance, one could say that the body is carving itself into the surrounding area, defiantly crafting a place for itself and creating its own presence. It is for this reason that I most often illustrate bodies in positions where they are comfortable, compromised, and unguarded -- where their personhood and their space are physically, culturally, and politically familiar with one another. Where the surrounding area effuses from the individual. Body politić means to me the active, reciprocal force of definition between the individual and their social surrounding, and how an individual must, in the face it all, define themself. In other words, a history of blackness.