CW - Violent Imagery
Helen Ifeagwu - digital artist.
“If you are tired of seeing all these posts on racism, imagine how tired some people are of experiencing it.”
“Amid the media bullshit, the Black Lives Matter movement can only exist through our willingness to be open, share, communicate and be our own mainstream source of information. We have to vet each piece of information that is fed to us and help others do the same. Unfortunately, society is built on a web of institutionalised injustice because it is based on scarcity and the idea that some have to be less for others to be more. I didn’t realise that some disadvantages that were blatantly obvious to me, as a black person in society, were unheard of to others. But it fills me with joy that we all feel the same rage and disgust for what has been happening.”
“I urge you to think about what unifies us, and as an artist, I am trying to use my voice to encourage us all to be deeper, freer thinkers.”
“Please vet every single piece of information you are handed to absorb. Where is it coming from? Why is it being promoted? There is lots of unnecessary evil accompanying and infiltrating our fight for social justice, and it carries different motives and objectives. I am begging you to look it up.”
“Please, please don’t let us be divided. Don’t fall into pitting others against you — when we are divided we can be conquered easily.”
“That’s the first rule of warfare.”
“Please help others be educated and keep fighting for our unity — that’s the good in this movement. Just don’t be blindsided by your frustration, disappointment in people who are silent at this time, or simply just your understandable anger.”
“Please fight for love, harmony and unity.”
“What is melanin?”
“Melanin is a complex polymer derived from the amino acid tyrosine. Melanin is responsible for determining skin and hair colour and is present in the skin to varying degrees, depending on how much a population has been exposed to the sun historically.”
“Can you imagine this widely misunderstood natural pigment has caused centuries of suffering and divisions between us just because we can’t understand that we are all part of one race that comes in multiple colour variations?”
“In plants and flowers, anthocyanins contribute to red, pink, blue and purple colours. Just like skin, flowers bloom in many colour ways, yet they each have their own beauty to them.”
“In most of my pieces, my message is always the same: there is a relationship between humankind, nature and technology that stems from the natural coding they are made from. At at time like this, this message seems more relevant than ever and I’ll likely keep finding new ways to express it through my art.”
“I’m not sure who to give credit to for this beautiful face, but the background collage comes from photos I’ve taken and recolored.”
“This is my digital painting of one of my favourite artists, Arinze Stanley’s graphic pencil works, titled “The Machine Man 3” (@arinze). In the three days I took to recreate it, I have had a systematic reboot of my world view. It’s taken uncomfortable conversations and a lot of inner searching and reflections to find words for how I feel. But I also discovered I have lots of hope.”
“I decided to taint the black and white piece red, because I in the past few days thought a lot about how much more blood it will take for us to see that we’re all one, when it’s clear that we all have the same red blood within us.”
“Don’t tell your children you were silent during the 2020 movement. They are the ones we are fighting for, for a better future for all of us.”
“This piece was inspired by artist Arinze Stanley’s “The Machine Man 3.”
“Lone warrior fighting for a new free world”.
At this point we might as well migrate to mars, amid a pandemic and a race war it seems the old world is facing complete obliteration.It makes me happy to see so many of us coming together and standing up against a broken system in so many ways. We might not even know what new world system we are fighting for, but it feels like something else is coming.The background features imagery by Jarred Hageman and Alex Maltsev. It’s a space fantasy, perhaps a portal leading to a new planet.