New Meanings

“With everything that has been going on in the world in the last sixteen months, from the pandemic to civil rights injustices, it was important for us to reopen with a thought-provoking show that addresses these core human issues.” — Lauren Saba

For New Meanings, he reimagines a new space that exists beyond the confines of the self and the different worlds that we all move around in. At the age of 24, Uzor left Nigeria to live in the United States of America. Like many seeking a fresh start away from their old homes, he found himself caught in between two lives but still desiring to find a place of his own. All of his work first begins as a way to relive the past, as he paints from photo references of family and friends until his memories are changed by the interventions of his present brushstrokes. Images of those he’s loved and known are demolished until they become unrecognizable ghosts, but Uzor honors his personal history so that the ordinary becomes iconographic.

These vivid and expressively rendered paintings become temporary portals that reveal traces of Uzor’s internal psyche while also taking on a different purpose. Once known to the artist in another life, these haunting figures, collaged from influences found in Asaba and America, now arise as guardians to a sacred yet transient place. Arranged in triptychs and panels, Uzor’s fluid imagery wraps around the gallery to unfold like a visual diary. Through cycles of construction and destruction, memory, dream, and reality meld together to take on another level of significance. In the current climate, where all our cultural identities have been thrown into flux, his work touches on the core of what the American dream is and what it means to be American today. Questions such as “‘Who am I?’ ‘Who are we?’ ‘Where do we belong?’” are central to the American experience. New Meanings serves as a momentary answer to these questions as Uzor invites us all to be part of this new world together.

About the artist

Born in the eastern part of Nigeria in the year 1991, Austin Uzor hails from Imo state. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2013 from the University of Nigeria Nsukka where he majored in drawing and painting. Shortly after graduation he kickstarted a studio practice which led to local and international recognition that set the groundwork for his first ever solo show in 2016 titled “Visitors” at the Rele gallery in Lagos, Nigeria. Uzor, a skilled draftsman and experienced painter, explores the world of the unknown by means of psychological spaces, feelings, and alternate realities in search of existential truths. He moved to the US in 2016 and this move is now the subject of his most current body of work and narrative, focusing on the traumas of being displaced. He is currently pursuing a Master degree in Drawing and Painting at the University of North Texas.