Beyond Testing the Waters, An Artist Plods on

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For John Chichetam Okoronta, winning the Life in My City Art Festival’s overall first prize seems to be the validation he needs to forge ahead on a more fulfilling artistic career. Okechukwu Uwaezuoke writes

It was three years after he first heard about the Life in My City Art Festival that the opportunity to participate in the art event finally offered itself to John Chichetam Okoronta. This was after he received emails congratulating him for his qualification for the competition, whose grand finale holds annually in Enugu. 

His earlier plan to feature at the event, which is more often known by its acronym LIMCAF, in 2020 was scuttled by the unexpected intrusion of the COVID-19 pandemic. He, however, was able to discern a silver lining in that period of enforced seclusion, when the entire human race seemed to be under siege. The period, he recalls, “also gave me ample time to practise and explore my ideas, in the same vein as preparing for the art festival.”

After his friends told him about the art festival back in school, he went on to do his own independent research online. “ I learned about how their core values aligned with empowering and developing creativity among the Nigerian youth, which heightened my interest in participating in the exhibition. Also, I was eager to meet more like-minded people and be in a space where artists are encouraged and their creativity is appreciated.”

Fast-forward to 2021. Okoronta not only qualified beyond the zonal level but also made it to the grand finale exhibition at the Institute of Management and Technology, Enugu’s International Conference Centre. “At the exhibition, it felt like being in the playground as a kid because I was engulfed in the beauty of Nigerian art,” he continues. “The event ended with me going home as the overall prize award winner, which till today feels so surreal, especially because I am the first artist to ever win in their first participation.”

Obviously, the judges deemed his entry “Smudged Vision”—a work that takes a swipe at the failed promises of the Nigerian government—the most succinct interpretation of that year’s theme, “Vision 2020: So Far, So What?” With the overall best prize award also came an all-expenses-paid trip to the Senegalese capital, Dakar, for the Dakar Biennale, better known as Dak’Art 2022, where he featured in an off-exhibition among other artists from Nigeria and other countries.

Not long after he was announced as the LIMCAF overall prize winner, messages of congratulations overwhelmed him. He recalled being on a video call that evening with his parents and siblings, who were all overjoyed by the news of the award. Later that night, he also got calls and congratulations from his other relatives and friends. 

If two years after winning the LIMCAF overall first prize, which was worth N500,000, he still waxes lyrical about the feat, it is because it boosted his self-confidence as an artist. The win itself was an epiphany, which reminded him that he could still attain greater heights in his career. 

Understandably, for giving his budding career the much-needed validation, LIMCAF has won itself a lifelong supporter in this self-taught artist, who turned 26 on January 28.  “I have since been paying more attention and taking a more professional approach to creating my artwork,” he disclosed in a recent chat. “It has also allowed me to meet many artists and art lovers in the art scene.”

The Imo State native, who trained as an information technologist at the Federal University of Technology, Owerri, works with highly detailed reference images, which he combines with his own imagination to produce conceptual artworks. 

Before producing his LIMCAF entry as a final-year university student, he typically took his time to understand the theme and did some research to develop his idea. “I had planned to balance school work and creating that art before the COVID-19 lockdown happened. Before travelling home, I visited my friend’s studio, where I posed as the muse and directed him on how to take the reference pictures.”

He had spent the subsequent days sourcing props to bring his idea to life. Producing the artwork itself took hours and spanned weeks. He recalls having to stay up working late into the night some of the days. Well, that was one of the brighter sides of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown; it gave him sufficient time to immerse himself in the process of producing the artwork.

In his bid to broaden his forms of expression, he found himself drawn to surrealism. A fallout of this endeavour, which he calls “Afro-surrealism,” was inspired by not only his personal experiences but also those of people in his immediate environment. 

His works end up coming across as a non-sequitur of objects fused with human figures, which is his way of showing a sense of connection between man and everything around him. “Most recently, some of my artworks show an interplay between hyperrealism and surrealism, which I use to explore themes of confidence, growth, identity, and mental health awareness,” he explains in his artist statement. “I try to capture emotion using highly detailed figures that pose in thought-provoking postures.

“In creating, I intend to not appeal to my audience aesthetically but also evoke emotions that encourage them to be more connected to the artwork and compel introspection.” 

Interestingly, this also seemed to be his mind-set while growing up as the only male child of his parents’ four children. He recalls never paying much attention to his artistic expressions. Back then, he says, he “just let the creativity flow.” This was even as he found himself expressing himself in different forms of art and craft. “I built different toys, painted artworks, and constructed model houses for myself and some kids in my neighbourhood. After I finished secondary school, while waiting for admission into the university, I became more intentional about my art, honing my skills to create better artworks. When I started getting positive reactions and reviews, I knew this wouldn’t be something I would stop doing in the near future.”

If his eventually settling for a form of expression that incorporates inanimate objects into hyper-realistic human figures, which also evokes a surrealistic approach, seemed inevitable, it was because his musings about man’s dependence on the inanimate objects around him became more intense. 

Perhaps, an important career milestone for him was overcoming his initial scepticism about the use of charcoal, which he thought was a messy and hard-to-control medium to work with.  “The first time I used it, the feeling was deeply satisfying. The texture felt free, and I could achieve darker tonal values with it. I have been using it since then.”

Also, winning the 2021 LIMCAF overall first prize means that the artist, who is better known by his friends as Chiche, has gone beyond “testing the waters” with his style. Though he wouldn’t describe himself yet as a full-time studio artist, he nonetheless adheres to a routine, which sees him only able to practise his art in the evenings during the weekdays because he has to attend to his daily subsistence during the day. During his free days, he only starts to draw after having a good meal, cleaning up his space, and setting the mood with music. There are, of course, intervening short breaks to drink water,  stretch and quickly scroll through his phone.  On such free days, he spends 10 to 12 hours producing art, while on weekdays he can only afford to spend between four and six hours.

Even as he looks up to such role models in the art scene as Arinze Stanley Egbengwu, Alex-Peter Idoko, Miles Johnson, and Kelvin Okafor, he has his sights set on treading his own unique creative path.