OSINACHI (B. 1991)

Osinachi’s Different Shades of Water restages David Hockney’s iconic double portrait Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) in digital form. Across five works, the artist explores water’s materiality, casting a black man in the role of poolside bather. Born in Aba, Nigeria, Osinachi is a celebrated cryptoartist, who predominantly uses Microsoft Word to produce his art. In Different Shades of Water, he endeavoured to capture the flicker of light across the rippling water employing only the programme’s limited suite of design tools. By turning his eye towards bodies that resemble his own, Osinachi has filtered Hockney’s narrative through his biography and background. Explaining such narrative focus, which is seen throughout his practice, Osinachi has said, ‘Through my art, I want to tell authentic stories influenced by my personal experience. One of the things I have experienced as a Nigerian is injustice. Another is inequality. The list goes on. I use my art to highlight these issues. Specifically, in exploring queerness, my art is geared towards presenting the queer body in its most authentic and boldest state, so that the subject in the artwork says to the viewer, “Yes I am real and normal. This is me and there is nothing wrong with me”’ (Osinachi quoted in C. Badewa, ‘Meet Osinachi, The Cryptoartist Fronting The Tokenized Artwork Movement In Africa’, Morebranches, 27 February 2020, https://www.morebranches.com/meet-osinachi/).