Art on a Postcard x War Child UK 2024 Part II

About
Elena Njoabuzia Onwochei-Garcia’s installations of oil paintings on paper explores how the dynamics between people are shaped by what appears to be real and the possibilities of fiction. My interest in this disjunction is inspired by the mestiza experience. The sense of never being aligned, being confronted with an unauthorised fictional self, and those conflicting moments of an existence “in-between“ reflects the reality of being mestiza. She works to enact a form of M.Lugone’s “world-travelling” to overcome forms of arrogant perception that produce ignorance about others.

The space of seeing is a grounding principle of Onwochei-Garcia’s practice: the paper paintings extend and restrict that space. With a focus on disrupting the spectator’s privilege, embodied in the space for observing, her installation aim is to accustom its viewer to the feeling of existing in the “in-between”. By turning paintings into structures, that refuse to display themselves and frustrate the looking process as you have to twist, turn and rotate to see them, she intends to upset the privilege of spectating.

Onwochei-Garcia entangles psychological, literary and historical analysis of literature to play out refuted experiences and challenge the idea of a singular narrative. The characters in the paintings are created by collaging her drawings of art historical, film and popular images. The layers of paint and narratives intertwine myths and maybes––stories emerge and retreat.

Education
2021-2023 Distinction MFA, Glasgow School of Art, Scotland
2015-2019 2:1 BA Combined Honours in History and History of Art with a Year Abroad, Durham University, England

Select Exhibitions/Awards
Onwochei-Garcia was selected as a Bloomberg New Contemporary (2023), shortlisted for Robert Walters UK New Artist 2023 and was awarded the RSA John Kinross Scholarship and the LeverhulmeMaster of Fine Art Bursary. Her recent exhibitions include New Contemporaries 2023 (Camden ArtCentre, 2024 and Grundy Art Gallery, 2023), Puzzling (New Glasgow Society, 2023), UK New Artist (Saatchi Gallery, 2023) Addendum (No.20 Arts Gallery, 2023), Short Lapses (Saltspace, 2023), RoyalBritish Society of Artists Rising Stars (ROSL, 2022), Painting our Past: The African Diaspora in England (Corbridge Museum and The Africa Centre in London, 2021).

Statement about AOAP Submitted Artwork
La Duquesa y el Duque draws on Miguel de Cervante’s Don Quijote, in particular, the nature of the characters who prank others for their own amusement and to cause humiliation to their victims. The Snail, a trickster figure, represents the character who slips in and out of form to get to what they believe is the best end for the story.


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