Forgotten Relics

Composed of contrasting textures and patterns created by hand on Microsoft Word, Forgotten Relics explores a future where its protagonists irreverently inhabit a human world that has destroyed nature. In these domestic scenes composed of bright colours, a man walks a robot dog, a goldfish takes its last breath and an octopus wrestles a man in his own bathtub, reflecting the increasing conflicts between humanity and the outside world. Here, each protagonist lives alongside the aftermath of an environmental collapse, and seeks out kinship with technology and other species as a means of traversing the way forward and discovering new modes of being.

This new series, rendered in Osinachi’s now widely recognised digital pop art aesthetic, furthers his critical approach to art-making. Looking beyond their exuberant style, his works invite us to examine the intersection between identity politics, technology and environmentalism, and lay bare the hypocrisies and incongruent perspectives that have already infiltrated our modern, domestic lives. Cementing his title of Africa’s foremost digital artist, Osinachi continues to demonstrate how visual art can be a powerful tool to mitigate the problems we face today.

Transforming Osinachi’s idiosyncratic style into the medium of screenprint has been a process by which his digital works have entered the physical. Often we see the physical world digitised; here the digital is brought to life in a tangible format. The vivid textures and colours of his digital work are skilfully translated into print, with layers of applied texture mimicking pixelation and a play of light and shadow that echoes the drop shadows of a screen. In this outstanding collection of screenprint editions, Osinachi’s digital worlds have materialised with unprecedented quality and unerring accuracy.

“In:vasion looks at the destruction of the marine world. While it might look like a party happening in the bathroom, it is really a question of how we as humans would react if our own space were invaded and polluted by intelligent and sophisticated marine life, represented by the octopus.” – Osinachi

Stylistically, In:vasion references the colour and drama of a classic Ukiyo-e Japanese woodblock print, but here, in a much more modern image, an octopus wrestles with a man in the shower. In a flail of limbs, the octopus invades the man’s personal space in a role reversal that Osinachi has specifically manufactured, positing the reality of ocean creatures contaminating our homes in the same way we have theirs. By blending traditional and new media in his artistic process, Osinachi references technology’s place in our past, present and future, and ties it implicitly to the fate of the natural world. 

As oceans become more inhospitable, with sea temperatures changing at a rapid rate and water pollution more prominent than ever, the artist’s foresight is one of warning, and impending threat, presenting a tongue-in-cheek example of the unforeseen consequences of our uninhibited actions.

“Awareness, yet still lacking a will to act, is what Out: A Walk is about. When things are out of place most of us are acutely aware of what needs to be done, yet there seems to be an acute apathy towards action by most people. In the work, the danger that the cat poses to the fish is dwarfed only by the fatality of the fish being out of water, which is in turn dwarfed by the attitude of indifference displayed by the woman. In other words, an attitude of indifference is our greatest threat.” – Osinachi

As well as describing a scene of existential threat, the densely populated kitchen scene presented in Out: A Walk gives Osinachi an opportunity to fully explore the range of techniques and digital tricks he can extract from his medium of choice, Microsoft Word. Utilising drawing tools within the software that most laymen will never have encountered, the artist is able to manipulate basic shapes into heads, hands, fingers and more. Often, the grainy textures he generates for the use of his character’s skin are taken from scanning in newspaper cuttings, both an inventive way of creating a distinct visual texture and a symbolic means of layering narratives and stories over one another.

The increased complexity with which Osinachi’s works have developed (with each piece now taking weeks compared to days to create) means that, similarly to artists working with paint who must wait for their works to dry between layers, so too now must he now wait for his overworked computer to cool down before he can continue with the next stages.

“When it comes to the future, we dream about a better world, about robots powered by artificial intelligence co-existing alongside humans. This is ironic in the sense that we have yet to take care of today as we should, yet we are already thinking about tomorrow as we want it to be. The Gourney captures the fake fulfilment that a robotic and AI-driven future might become – a future where we try to undo the mess of the past as humanity using technology. What would we be doing? Creating robotic and AI-driven versions of what was once the natural world? Yes, we would have new things, even new words like “Gourney”, but where would that leave us?” – Osinachi

The Forgotten Relics series explores a lesser charted territory in Osinachi’s oeuvre, that of humankind’s tragic penchant for destruction. Albeit playfully, the artist explores our apathetic approach to replicating and replacing nature, presenting a futuristic vision instead. The Gourney summarises this sentiment, with a man proudly facing the viewer whilst walking his robotic dog. In a neat reference to the first work in the series, In-vasion, Osinachi continues to contrast humanity against other forms of intelligence, but this time the dog is controlled on a lead rather than fighting against the man, like the invasive octopus. The sad conclusion to draw from this narrative, is that coexistence with the natural world seems like an impossibility – our only hope for a quiet life, safe in our own homes, comes down to replacing our competitors (any other sentient life form) with substitutions programmed for compliance.