Of Myths and Legend - asiko | London based award winning African Conceptual Photographer creating Portraiture work

Of Myths and Legends

The new body of work ‘Of myth and legend’ draws inspiration from the stories of the deities from Nigerian and European culture. Through the work I explore my shared heritages of African and European culture to create new narrative blends of mythological deities. The series composed of fashion photographic imagery and collage symbolism is an interpolation of diasporic ideology using deity iconography.

There will be 15 pieces of artwork created in the project that will celebrate our narratives and highlight our cosmic threads that weaves us together. The work explores the connections or shared stories, highlighting we have more in common and our connections loom deeper through the ages.

Themes

Mythological, Culture, Connection, Dramatic, Epic, Mysterious, Otherworldly, Fantasy, High Fashion, Opulent

When I was young I was inspired by the stories of the heroes and mythology of my Yoruba culture. There were stories of the deities collectively called the Orisha. They told of the great feats of Shango, the god of thunder, the wisdom of Osun, the god of love, the battles of Ogun, the god of war and many more.

These were my first exposures to cultural mythology and folklore and formed my templates of heroism.

These cultural icons in Yoruba mythology form the inspiration for a new body of work called ‘of myth and legend’ which explores the legends of the Orisha through new interpretations of the diaspora narrative. As a Yoruba man currently living in the U.K. and particularly London, I am exposed to a multicultural platform of people and ways of life. From German to Indian, African and Asian, the palette of London is wide and vast, a melting point of ethnicities and backgrounds.

In living in London I have discovered other heroic cultures and mythology and although different there are similarities and common threads. I was intrigued by how Norse, Greek, Anglo Saxon, Yoruba and various other mythologies have a lot in common through the story telling narratives of their deities. Sango (Yoruba), Thunor (Anglo-Saxon) and Thor (Norse) are gods of thunder and lightning who were fierce warriors, headstrong and hot tempered. Esu (Yoruba) like Hermes (Greek) is a mischievous deity and a messenger of the gods and like them Loki (Norse) is also a trickster.

Though these societies and cultures are thousands of miles apart, there are commonalities to their stories, we have a shared humanity and our aspirations in the heroes we portray. As humans despite the differences that exist, we have more in common than we think.

These narratives and explorations influenced my new body work ‘of myth and legend’ which brings together mythological characters from various ethnicities, creating a cultural blend deities. Using the ideology of the Orisha my first exposure to deities as my starting point I will layer it with inspirations from Anglo-Saxon, Norse and other mythologies drawing parallels with my African and other heritages inspired by exposures in London.

Apart from drawing inspiration from multidimensionality of our shared mythologies, I will also draw from the aesthetics of contemporary multicultural fashion culture from London.