Based in Lagos, Nigeria, Victor Ubah reflects upon social infrastructure, self-determination and identity in his artistic practice. Influenced by the anime and popular cartoon animations he watched throughout his adolescence, he was inspired by an image’s ability to communicate intricate ideas about identity and personality. He was further inspired by Cubism, the early 20th-century avant-garde art movement led by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized the representation of three-dimensional forms by painting from many viewpoints, rather than a singular perspective.

In a body of acrylic portraits, Ubah paints his subjects as multidimensional personalities existing within one dimensional social structures. His poetic visual language marries vibrantly colored, one-dimensional background with expressive cubist geometry. commenting on the symbiotic correlation of the individual to 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. His attention to each figure’s personal fashion expressed through bold textile patterns and rich color palettes amplify his ethos that “there is no feeling of being alive without a sense of identity.”