Ep 166: A Triangulation ft Amir Bey, Grace Nkem, and Obinna Elechi

Obinna Elechi is a New York-based designer and artist working on interiors, furniture, art and architecture projects. Drawing from formative years spent in Nigeria, Holland and the United States, his work is explores narratives, from traditional to futurist.

Obinna received a Bachelor of Architecture from Virginia Tech and a Master of Architecture from Parsons School of Design.
He has previously worked on a range of projects for organizations including the Rural Studio, Gensler, MoMA and Soho House.

GRACE NKEM
(surname pronounced in-kem or ‘n-kem)

Born 1997 in Tver, Russia
Lives and works in New York City

Artist Bio

Grace Nkem is a Nigerian-Russian painter from Tver who studied Art History at Columbia University and now lives and works in New York City. In her work she grapples with the ills of social alienation, mass digitization, and globalism— ironically noting that she owes her very existence to the latter of the three.

Formally, her paintings are inspired by twentieth and twenty-first century figurative painting, and the internet writ large (where, in the artist's own words, "all images seem to exist at once."). Leaning heavily into luminous, contrasting color palettes and crisp atmospheres, Nkem brings together disparate images through free association, noting that it takes very little prompting for the human eye to dive into metaphor: when objects are put beside one another in a picture, a connection inevitably arises between them. Meaning in her work is thus produced according to both the internal logic of her paintings’ and the social context they are viewed in.

The artist is unabashedly open about her deep interest in late twentieth and twenty first century cultural critics like Ta’Neshi Coates, Mark Fischer, Hito Styerl, Nick Land, and Jean Baudrillard. Nonetheless, rather than produce commentary, her work asks viewers to tease issues out for themselves.

Nkem’s main goal is to produce artwork that rewards sustained attention as she works through themes that weigh heavily upon the moder… Read More

Born in New York City where I am based. My work spans from visual, occult, and performance arts, including writing, mix-media and multi-discipline arts.