Victor Ubah

Victor Ubah, based in Lagos, Nigeria, explores social infrastructure, self-determination, and identity in his art. He draws inspiration from anime, and popular cartoon animations from his adolescence, which inspired him to use images to convey intricate ideas about identity and personality. He was also influenced by Cubism, an early 20th-century avant-garde art movement led by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, which revolutionized the representation of three-dimensional forms by painting from multiple viewpoints.

In his body of acrylic portraits, Victor Ubah portrays his subjects as multidimensional personalities existing within one-dimensional social structures. He uses poetic visual language that combines vibrantly colored, one-dimensional backgrounds with expressive cubist geometry to comment on the symbiotic correlation between the individual and their community. Ubah translates the uniqueness of each personality by rendering their faces in a mosaic of protruding cubist forms while attending to their gaze with a naturalist style. He also pays attention to each figure's personal fashion expressed through bold textile patterns and rich color palettes to amplify his belief that "there is no feeling of being alive without a sense of identity."