Mikael Owunna
It is one of those great pleasures when you first come across someone’s work that really knocks you out. It is especially wonderful when you look further into the photographer and their works that there is so, so much more behind them and their photographs that speaks to you on a deeper level. This was the case when I first saw Mikael Owunna’s body of work, Infinite Essence while jurying photolucida’s Critical Mass competition last summer. I will say that I am also remiss in waiting so long to make it to his interview, especially when this work stood out so prominently and stayed with me for so long. Sometimes I wish I had the time to do these interviews weekly, but that is neither here nor there. What is important is that this work has been seen multiple times at outlets far, far greater than anything I’m doing here. I mean, let’s take a second and look…Aperture, NPR, VICE, and The New York Times?…outstanding! Not to mention a TEDx talk that finally made me realize that I needed to get to him before he became burned out on all the amazing press. This work is deeply personal, stunning in its beauty and execution, and most importantly tells a story and lends a message that so many need to hear and understand.
Like I mentioned before, this initial work that I experienced led me to a slightly older body of work and book that is just as important and intriguing as the latter. Limitless Africans is an incredible collection of portraits of the African LGBTQ community that makes one realize how much talent and grace Mikael brings to the photographic medium. I am thoroughly disappointed that this book is already sold out (only because I don’t have one) but am hoping for a second printing or an outlet that will have a copy available. I mention a specific photograph in this interview from his collection that is one of the stand out portraits of recent years that will clearly be staying with me for some time. I cannot even articulate why this particular image resonates so strongly, but I feel that it is as equally representative of the concept that Mikael’s Infinite Essence is, and that is that we are all of one community. No one person is greater than the next, equality is everything, and that we are all human together - as spiritual beings.
To be Black, to be gay, and to live in this current society is a struggle. Mikael has an incredible story to tell and illustrate with his photographs. He is helping me to learn and grow myself. I am humbled and honored by the time he has given me to share his words and images with you.
PO, Queer Congolese (Pronouns: she or they), Shot in Brussels, Belgium, 2017, from Limitless Africans
Bio -
Mikael Owunna (b. 1990) is a Nigerian-Swedish American photographer, Fulbright Scholar and engineer. His work explores the relationship between engineering, optics, the black body and queerness. Owunna imagines new universes and realities for marginalized communities around the globe.
Owunna’s work has exhibited across Asia, Europe and North America and been featured in media ranging from the New York Times, CNN, NPR, and VICE to The Guardian. He has lectured about his work at venues including Harvard Law School, World Press Photo (Netherlands), Sveriges Radio (Sweden) and TEDx. His first published monograph, Limitless Africans, was released in 2019.
Interview -
Michael Kirchoff: Thank you for being a part of Catalyst: Interviews, Mikael. I wanted to start off asking you about how and when photography came into your life. As I understand it, you had been studying Biomedical Engineering at Duke University, and not photography, specifically. How was it that photography entered into the equation and what about it made you realize this was a new path you needed to explore?
Michael Owunna: I was drawn to photography during my freshman year. I had been really struggling with my sexuality and African identities, feeling like I could not resolve these two identities in the same body. I had been told by members of my family in Nigeria also that it was “un-African” to be LGBTQ, and this central space of tension led to a spiral of anxiety and depression at the time. I felt voiceless.
One of my uncles in the Raleigh area was also an amateur photographer, and I expressed to him my interest in getting a camera before going to study at Oxford that summer. He mentored and nurtured me, helped me pick my first two cameras, and, as I fell in love with the craft that summer, I began to find my voice again.
MK: Had you had any other interests or inspirations in the arts previous to this time?
MO: This is an interesting question. The arts were never seen as an option in my family, so I did not ever seriously delve into the domain until college. Although I did some creative writing and video editing through high school, these were primarily hobbies and I did not take them seriously in the same way that I would come to find the arts in university. It was really a big state change for me and my life.
MK: I wanted to address the four main bodies of work that appear on your website to examine the journey you have taken through them, before moving into some more general questions about process. It appears that your earliest work, I am Atayal (Tayen)!, is a collaboration and work that you explored as a Fulbright Scholar. What was the genesis of this work, and what was the intention behind the collaboration?
MO: After completing my dual degrees in Biomedical Engineering and History at Duke, I was selected to travel to Taiwan as a Fulbright Scholar in 2012. I worked at an Atayal Taiwanese aboriginal school in Nan’ao, and I was curious about the ways in which photography could be taught as a space of cultural empowerment and enrichment in marginalized communities. This was linked to my own personal journey into voice from a space of marginalization via the photographic medium. While in Taiwan, I met Prof. Christine Yeh of USF who was conducting her Fulbright scholarly research similarly on Taiwanese aboriginal youth and using art and a culturally relevant curriculum to improve long-term educational outcomes for the community. It was incredibly serendipitous, and we decided to collaborate with one another and local teachers Jennifer Huang and Nancy Lee at Nan’ao Elementary School. We built a year-long curriculum that included Atayal language, myths, legends, artistic projects and photography to provide our students with the space and tools to explore and tell their stories and that of their community.
I taught the photography portion of the project, using a Literacy through Photography pedagogical approach, and it was incredible seeing the immense work produced by our first and second grade students. The series was featured in a full floor exhibition at the National Taiwan Museum in 2014, attended by thousands of community members, aboriginal leaders and members of Taiwanese Parliament and the US State Department.
Prof. Christine Yeh photographed by students Tokun and Biho, 2012, from I am Atayal (Tayen)!
Students, Miya (front) practicing photography, 2012, from I am Atayal (Tayen)!
Student, Yuraw, practicing photography, 2012, from I am Atayal (Tayen)!
Example of work by student, Sayun, 2013, from I am Atayal (Tayen)!
Example of work by student, Abu, 2013, from I am Atayal (Tayen)!
MK: Depression is an all too common illness found in current society. Your next body of work examines a year of your struggles with this condition. Was the creation of 1 Year Struggling with Depression as cathartic an experience as a painful one? In other words, did you find it helpful to document yourself in this way, and ultimately, do you feel that it is something that you now keep in check from this examination? How may it help others?
MO: Mental illness was something that I really struggled with for much of my twenties. When I worked on the series 1 Year Struggling with Depression, I had in many ways hit rock bottom. Many days I felt completely disassociated from my body, like I was watching myself talking to people while feeling nothing. It was a very painful moment in my life after struggling deeply for years with trauma around my sexuality.
I had been using photography to process trauma since college, and so when this period of my life occurred, I continued to use photography and self-portraiture as an outlet when I was feeling emotionally overwhelmed. It was both cathartic and painful.
I return to self-portraiture from time to time and each time the photographs look completely different. It is an interesting way to document the changes in my life, even as so much has changed since I created that body of work.
Self-portrait, 2015-16, from 1 Year Struggling with Depression
Self-portrait, 2015-16, from 1 Year Struggling with Depression
Self-portrait, 2015-16, from 1 Year Struggling with Depression
Self-portrait, 2015-16, from 1 Year Struggling with Depression
Self-portrait, 2015-16, from 1 Year Struggling with Depression
MK: With the Limitless Africans body of work, you embarked on what has been your longest project to date. This seems to be the moment where you knew exactly what you needed to do in finding your voice. How does this work address identity in its examination of both your African heritage and the LGBTQ community?
MO: I worked on the series Limitless Africans for 6 years and traveled to 10 different countries across North America, Europe and the Caribbean photographing and interviewing over 50 LGBTQ African immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers. This work also included years of research into precolonial African sexuality and gender, which revealed a rich history of queer African leaders and identities that were criminalized, penalized and erased over the course of European colonialism.
Combining photography, narrative and historical research allowed me to formulate a response to the question that had been haunting me since I was a teenager: “Was it un-African to be LGBTQ?” As there was incredibly limited documentation, especially for those of us in diaspora, I felt compelled to create this body of work as a response and show that we have always existed as LGBTQ African people.
MK: I want to also ask about what the process of making the accompanying book was like for you. Sadly (for those of us without a copy) it is sold out. There seem to be so many details about its production that helped tell the story you wanted to tell. How did this come about, and did you always envision it as a book project?
MO: After I completed shooting the Limitless Africans series in 2017 with a final three-month sprint across 7 countries in Europe, I spent the next year editing and sequencing the work and compiling the images and interviews. Although I had originally started the project only as a prayer and dream for my younger self to know that he always belonged, when I reviewed and reflected upon the completed project, I saw the potential of book format to summate and collate the stories, images and historical research together.
I was awarded as a finalist for the 2019 FotoEvidence Book Award with World Press Photo, and the book was published on October 11, 2019.
There are a few remaining copies of the book here:
http://fotoevidence.com/book/40/hard-copy
(MK: Excellent news! - Heading there now to get a copy.)
MK: Your portraits in Limitless Africans are simply wonderful and engaging. I’m drawn over and over again to the photograph taken in the snow in Brooklyn, 4 Queer African Women, as a prime example. I know this work is finished, but do you ever consider continuing on in this vein with future work?
MO: Thank you. That photograph in particular was very special, as I expanded the scope of my vision for the Limitless Africans series to explore questions of community and belonging. How do we not only assert our personhood as individuals, but in a matrix of connection with one another? The photograph, 4 Queer African Women responds to that question in a queer African diasporic framework. The individuals from left to right are Badu (Queer Ivorian), Yéwá (Queer Nigerian), Amadi (Queer Nigerian) and Mai’Yah (Queer Liberian). I had worked with Mai’Yah on a Limitless shoot in 2015 and we were excited to explore what community could look like a larger, inter-personal context, which served as the genesis for the image.
I still engage with African queerness in my current bodies of work, the results just look different.
4 Queer African Women (from right to left): Mai'Yah, Queer Liberian (Pronouns: she or they) - Amadi, Queer Nigerian (Pronouns: she) - Yéwá, Queer Nigerian (Pronouns: she or they) - Badu, Queer Ivorian (Pronouns: she), Shot in Brooklyn, NY, 2017, from Limitless Africans
Tobi, Queer Nigerian (Pronouns: they) with their daughter Gabi, Shot in Essex, United Kingdom, 2017, from Limitless Africans
Kaamila, Queer Somali (Pronouns: they), Shot in Boston, MA, 2016, from Limitless Africans
Gesiye, Bisexual/Queer Nigerian-Trinidadian (Pronouns: she), Shot in Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago, 2015, from Limitless Africans
MK: While looking at work through Critical Mass in 2019, your work jumped out to me immediately and was my first introduction to your photography. Thankfully, this has led me to the previous collections as well. I’m wondering what led you to create Infinite Essence, and do you see it as a natural progression in following previous bodies of work?
MO: My most recent photographic series, Infinite Essence, responds to widespread media imagery of black people being shot and killed by the police. To challenge these narratives, which depict the black body as a site of death, I used my engineering background and built a camera flash that only transmits ultraviolet light. I hand paint my models’ bodies and in total darkness my flash illuminates their bodies with my painted patterns, reimagining the black body as a space of magic and light.
Infinite Essence builds on my previous bodies of work’s exploration of queer African mythology and indigenous conceptions of the universe and soul. The title comes from a quote by Chinua Achebe, “Or is chi an infinitesimal manifestation of Chukwu’s infinite essence given to each of us separately and uniquely, a single ray from the sun’s boundless radiance?"
MK: I watched your TEDx talk a couple of times and found it interesting how you found an escape into the world of fantasy and sci-fi through video games and role-playing. I also must admit to engaging in more than my own share of this when I was younger, and I can see how it would have helped in dealing with the world of reality. Seeing how your early need to escape was transformed later into work like Infinite Essence is interesting. Did you find this to be a key to connecting your past with your present?
MO: I see time as a unity wherein past, present and future collide. When I was conceptualizing my Infinite Essence work, I went back to the images that had touched and provided me a space of solace as a child. These were words of fantasy and magic, especially those from the videogame series Final Fantasy. As a teenager, whenever I was feeling overwhelmed, isolated or hurt in some way, I would catapult myself into these worlds of magic. As I sought to encode my vision for a reimagined black body, I returned to these same images from my youth as a source of inspiration to reconfigure that sensation of ‘solace’ within the dimension of the photograph.
MK: There is a major technical side to Infinite Essence that speaks to your early studies and work in Biomedical Engineering. This is a fascinating feature in the creation of these images with regard to the previously mentioned “magical” elements of your younger years. Can you give us some insight into the tech and how it connects you to this other aspect of your life?
MO: My training as an engineer has begot a photographic practice rooted, in many respects, in the scientific method. Similarly, I start my projects with a question, and I pose visual hypotheses on how to solve them. Here my question was, how do I reimagine the black body as a space of magic and light. I tried different methodologies including light painting and projectors before returning to my sources of inspiration in Final Fantasy and Igbo cosmology when a light bulb went off to explore the spectrum of ultraviolet light to reimagine a new story about the black body. I then leveraged my skills as an engineer to build an ultraviolet flash and got to work crafting my images.
MK: While you clearly make work for yourself, it is quite timely and important in more ways than one. Both Limitless Africans and Infinite Essence address some topical issues in current society. How do you feel about your photographs illustrating something that is at the forefront of the news on a daily basis?
MO: To be honest, I don’t really care. Capitalist consumption lurks like a vulture, gulping down the skeletons of black and brown stories based on constructed forms of relevancy when people suddenly “care” about the stories of people of color or not. I ignore it honestly, because very few American liberals cared about my work on LGBTQ immigrants while Obama was in office and then when Trump was elected, they became “engaged”. “This work is so important,” people have told me, “more than ever now” – to whom? White people? Cis-heterosexual people? It is tired, boring and incredibly lazy. It shows how shallow and short-lived the engagement is, and if I made work for this gaze, I would inevitably be cratered into disappointment with the cycles of consumption. People will stop caring about engaging with these stories, but these stories will always matter, so I always make work for myself. It grounds me constantly in my value system and the true meaning behind my work and journey.
"Kinya" 2017, from Infinite Essence
"James" 2017, from Infinite Essence
"Uche" 2017, from Infinite Essence
"Emem" 2017, from Infinite Essence
MK: Moving into some more general questioning, I think that getting to know you through these inquiries is very important to see who you are as an artist. So, what is it that drives you as a creator, and what is your primary objective in photography?
MO: My objective is to tell stories that matter to me, worlds that I want to visualize and move into. It is a space of healing that I am constructing with each breath and image.
MK: Do you feel you’ve achieved finding your particular style or voice, and if so, do you think you will eventually feel the need to break out and follow a different path?
MO: I see destiny as already written, a path I am following undetermined by the construct of time.
MK: How do you know if you’re ever really done with a specific body of work? Do you ever go back to revisit images or collections to improve upon what you felt was previously finished?
MO: I listen to what my body and heart are telling me as a chapter closes. Periodically I do return to look at older bodies of work, but usually my gut instinct is correct.
MK: Does a body of work ever begin to form strictly through the editing process? Have you ever changed the direction of a body of work midstream?
MO: I invest months to years in the conceptualization phase of a series, testing and retesting my visual hypotheses in line with the scientific method and evaluating their correlation with my initial question. So by the time I have determined my approach to the work, it is pretty much set. Sometimes, however, the words to describe a project come later through editing and building the plane as I fly it. That has changed and evolved the direction of the series in turn, leaving a space of slack for adaptability as needs and conditions potentially change.
MK: What’s next? We’ve been seeing your work more and more lately, especially with the introduction of Infinite Essence. Will this work continue, and what might the future bring for it? Are there any other projects, plans, exhibitions, books, etc., that we might see soon, as well?
MO: There is a lot in store, and I am excited for people to see.
You can find and learn more about Mikael's work at his website here.
All photographs, ©Mikael Owunna
