Elena Njoabuzia Onwochei-Garcia is based in Glasgow and works with installations of oil paintings on paper that explore the dynamic between the real and the fiction. Onwochei-Garcia’s installations of oil paintings on paper explore how the dynamics between people are shaped by what appears to be real and the possibilities of fiction. Her 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.
Her recent exhibitions include New Contemporaries 2023, Camden Art Centre, London (2024) and Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool; New Glasgow Society, Glasgow; Saatchi
Gallery, London; No.20 Arts Gallery, London; Saltspace, Glasgow (all 2023); Englis Heritage, Northumberland; Royal British Society of Artists Rising Stars, London (both 2022); Corbridge Museum and The Africa Centre, London (2021).
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.
Her recent exhibitions include New Contemporaries 2023, Camden Art Centre, London (2024) and Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool; New Glasgow Society, Glasgow; Saatchi
Gallery, London; No.20 Arts Gallery, London; Saltspace, Glasgow (all 2023); Englis Heritage, Northumberland; Royal British Society of Artists Rising Stars, London (both 2022); Corbridge Museum and The Africa Centre, London (2021).
