Our Reunion Weekend programming features a special exhibit and gallery talk by renowned artist Mikael Owunna '08.
About the Artist: Mikael Owunna (WRA ‘08) is a Nigerian American multimedia artist, filmmaker, engineer, Fulbright scholar, and the President of the City of Pittsburgh’s Public Art and Civic Design Commission. He is also the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Rainbow Serpent, a Black LGBTQ art | tech | spirituality nonprofit organization. Owunna’s artistic work spans from creative media, including photography, installation, video art, performance art, sculpture, and architectural light design, to new technologies such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), NFTs, and blockchain. 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.
To create this image from his series Infinite Essence, Owunna leveraged his engineering training to build a camera flash that only transmits ultraviolet light, hand-painted the body of a Black model with fluorescent paints that only glow under ultraviolet light, and photographed them in total darkness. For the fraction of a second that the shutter snapped, a transfiguration happened: their body was illuminated as the starry universe itself, and scenes inspired by the archive of African diasporic myth sprang to life. Infinite Essence was selected by NPR among their Favorite Photos of 2019 and earned Owunna the distinction of International Fine Art Photographer of the Year in 2021.
Owunna’s work has been exhibited across Africa, Asia, Europe, North and South America and has been collected and showcased by institutions such as Fotografiska Stockholm; Smithsonian National Museum of African-American History & Culture; MIT Media Lab; Art Dubai; Digital Art Fair Asia; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and North Carolina Museum of Art. His work has also been featured in media ranging from the New York Times to CNN, NPR, VICE, The Guardian, and TIME Magazine. Owunna’s work has been commissioned for major public art installations by organizations including the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Allegheny County, Cleveland Foundation, Contemporary Art Museum Raleigh, Pittsburgh International Airport, and Orange Barrel Media.