White handle mug with a printed artwork wrapped around the mug.
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Amma's Womb Mug

SKU:
W194318
$20.00 $12.00
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Width:
4.00 (in)
Height:
4.50 (in)
Depth:
5.50 (in)
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Description

Mikael Owunna Amma's Womb Mug

Amma’s Womb

In Dogon cosmology, Amma is the Dogon personification of Primordial Androgynous Blackness. Prefigured signs within Amma encode all of the potentiality of the universe, from stellar bodies to the human fetus. In the utter blackness of Amma’s infinite womb, all beings await their gestation and form.

 

Photographic Process

In the photographs of Infinite Essence and Cosmologies, Owunna leverages his training as an engineer to explore the nuances of darkness and light.  He employs ultraviolet strobes, painted fluorescent backdrops, and carefully hand painted nude bodies of Black models that only glow under ultraviolet light.  When he then photographs the models in total darkness, the shutter snaps, and for that fraction of a second, synchronized beams of ultraviolet light illuminate a glowing scene that reanimates tableaus of creation from the archive of African diasporic myth.

About the Artist

Mikael Owunna is a Nigerian American multi-media artist, filmmaker, and engineer. Exploring the intersections of technology, art, and African cosmologies, his work seeks to elucidate an emancipatory vision of possibility that revives traditional African knowledge systems and pushes people beyond all boundaries, restrictions, and frontiers.

Owunna’s work has been exhibited across Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America and been collected by institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Nasher Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Middlebury College Museum of Art; Equal Justice Initiative; Duke University Pratt School of Engineering; and National Taiwan Museum. His work has also been featured in media ranging from the New York Times to CNN, NPR, VICE, and The Guardian. He has lectured at venues including Harvard Law School, World Press Photo (Netherlands), Tate Modern (UK), and TEDx. Owunna has published two monographs: Limitless Africans (FotoEvidence, 2019) and Cosmologies (ClampArt, 2021). Owunna’s multi-media practice includes film, and in 2021 he directed the dance film Obi Mbu (The Primordial House) with Marques Redd. Owunna's work has been commissioned for major public art installations by organizations including the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Foundation, Contemporary Art Museum Raleigh, Pittsburgh International Airport, and Orange Barrel Media.