Expert Advisors
Uche Okpa-Iroha
Uche Okpa-Iroha is a Nigerian multidisciplinary artist known for his incredible work in photography. Born in Enugu in 1972, he is a founding member of the Blackbox Collective and Invisible Borders Trans-African Organisation. He is also the founder of The Nlele Institute, where he serves as Director.
Okpa-Iroha is a highly acclaimed artist with many awards to his name. He is a two-time winner of the Seydou Keita Prize for photography and has also won the Jean-Paul Blachere Prize.
His artistic expressions are a reflection of the diversity and uniqueness of African communities. He believes that representation and identity are some of the core issues hampering the development of African photography, based on the influence of stereotypes passed on from periods of the colonized ruling. This informs his approach to his work, where he explores intrinsic and extrinsic sources of inspiration to create various artistic expressions.
Uche Okpa-Iroha is a doctoral art student at the Department of Art History, Weinberg College of Arts and Science, Illinois. His research interests explore the development of modes and theories of representation, as they have been constructed historically but as they hold purpose and relevance for artists and scholars interrogating their societies in the 21st century. Okpa-Iroha is an ex-resident and alumnus of the Rijksakademie van Beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam, the Netherlands (2011-2012). He co-founded the photography and video art night of projections – FOTOPARTY Lagos and the Lagos Portfolio Review. Additionally, he is the founder of the Lagos Open Range Exhibition Project.