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Textures Summer Group Show.
18August
News

Textures Summer Group Show.

Bringing together six artists from all over the African continent, these artworks combine ancestral culture and modernism, past and future, to better understand the present time.
Internationally recognized or presented recently in Europe, these artists highlight experimental and plural approaches through a range of forms from fabrics, paper, beads, newspapers, photographs, recycled flip flops, found materials….

Each week we will present one of the artists of the "Textures Summer Group Show". 
Today we highlight Onyis Martin.

 

Born in 1987, living and working in his native Kenya, Onyis Martin knew how, in a few years, to gain his place among the visual artists recognized in Africa. At the age of 34, he had already exhibited on all five continents. After his beginnings in his country, Martin's works spread rapidly around the world from a fair in Taiwan, artistic residencies in Germany and Poland, exhibitions in Australia and participation in 1-54 art fair in London and New York. His presence is prominent in several exhibitions of large institutions in South Africa, including the Cape Town Zeitz Museum.

The works he presents are large canvases onto which several materials and media are glued, giving the work a very characteristic aspect of old walls of  posters. Experimenting with a wide range of materials, Martin explores the human condition and the global geo-political interface, specifically through issues surrounding human trafficking, migration, corruption and displacement. Additionally, he explores matters surrounding communication, the rapidly changing technological environment and the consumerism that surrounds it.

Using his personal experience as a point of departure, he interweaves individual and collective experiences highlighting the varying yet similar experiences people have in different places globally. In his group of artworks, Talking Walls, Martin extended his exploration of how information depends on and is influenced by freedom and social structure towards investigating the rise of consumerism. Onyis Martin scans us, interrogates us and presents his world, our world, as it can be under all its latitudes and, in this way, aspires to the universal. 

Textures Summer Group Show with Onyis Martin - Emeka Udemba - Marion Boehm Francklin Mbungu - Patrick Tagoe-Turkson – David Thuku 

Part III: Onyis Martin. OOA Gallery | Barcelona

7/8 - 5/9/2021