be/longing: Amarachi Odimba
Amarachi Odimba’s mixed media works take a step back to explore timeless questions of the shared human experience. With the help of explosive colors, strong outlines, and free running paint, Odimba strives to help her audience answer the questions: How do we define true love? What is community to us? Do we feel seen? Do we feel like we belong?
Urevbu Contemporary is pleased to present Be/longing, a solo exhibition featuring recent paintings from Amarachi Odimba. In her new body of work, the multi-figure compositions reveal the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Be/longing is a reflection of Odimba’s deconstruction of loneliness and coming to terms with social isolation. She contemplates themes such as love and intimacy, representation and underrepresentation, inclusion and exclusion, and community and collaboration. The paintings in this exhibition are united by figurative groupings and heavily-layered paint drips. The surfaces of her canvases are suffused with texture made by gestural brushstrokes. The figures’ physicality and proximity create a sense of familiarity, while the ambiguity in their lack of facial expression obscures the subject. Through the paintings of Be/longing, Odimba expresses the universal yearning for acceptance and connection.
