HAPPY B-DAY OSINACHI!
Today we want to wish a very happy 30th birthday to dear artist Osinachi!
Kate Vass Galerie Team
The Pool Day, unique NFT
Auctioned at Christie’s Auction in London, 2021
Osinachi (born Prince Jacon Osinachi Igwe, 24 October 1991) is a self-taught digital artist whose work explores personal experiences within a technological environment.
The Visit #3/6, NFT by Osinachi
Osinachi, who grew up in Aba, Nigeria, produces drawings using Microsoft Word, where he utilizes the basic limited design palette of the word processing software to create narrative illustrations.
Africa’s foremost cryptoartist, Osinachi‘s works are further registered in the blockchain and sold as non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
In 2018, he became the first-ever Nigerian artist to showcase artworks at the Ethereal Summit, a conference in New York that seeks to bridge the gap between technology and art through blockchain.
In 2020 Kate Vass Galerie has been the first gallery to present his first solo show ‘Osinachi - Existence as a protest’, showcasing artworks both in physical and digital format (NFTs).
“Osinachi took Microsoft Word, a word processing tool with 1.2 billion users globally, and found a new way to use it as a tool for making digital art that none of us have seen before. Through sheer effort, imagination, and creativity, Osinachi brings virtuosity to what most people overlooked or cast aside as a crude tool for making basic shapes and patterns. Osinachi’s textures and color palettes sing out and demand attention. Inspired by the textiles found in Nigeria, they feel more like a rich collage of vibrant fabrics than a screen full of cold lifeless pixels. The fearless creative energy and positivity of Osinachi’s aesthetic extend seamlessly into the subject matter of his work.
Osinachi is a brilliant protest artist. Rather than depict dramatic scenes of struggle and conflict as is often typical with protest art, his weapon of choice is to highlight normalcy and positivity.
His government has some of the most vicious anti-LGTBQ laws in the world, yet he chooses to celebrate this community in the face of these laws by showing its members happily living their lives as everyday human beings. By avoiding negativity and drama and simply presenting positive images of people just trying to live their lives, Osinachi completely defangs anti-LGBTQ propaganda. Rather than pour gas on a fire, he extinguishes it all together.
Like all great artists, Osinachi is a mirror of his times, and the topics he addresses -- from environmentalism to racism and single parenthood -- resonate far outside the borders of Nigeria. He is a reminder of what art and artists can be for us all when they are performing at their best and fulfilling their most important function within our increasingly global culture.” written by Jason Bailey as a forward for the show curated at Kate Vass.
Recently, among many other achievements, a selection of the artist’s NFTs has been auctioned at Christie’s and his work is on display as a permanent collection at the Chicago Booth, University of Chicago in London where it can be of inspiration for many students.
Dean Randy Kroszner of Chicago Booth, University of Chicago, and Osinachi at the University Campus with the work
