Wilfred Ukpong

This is the kind of call that can’t be ignored. Wilfred Ukpong was supposed to be an engineer, like his father, a manager for ExxonMobil, and like his siblings too. But all it took was a book, Flash of the Spirit, and the calling was too loud to be ignored - a call that led on a path of self-discovery and art making. For good.

“It was an illumination, it felt like I really found myself. I felt alive for the first time.”

When Ukpong dropped out of engineering to be an artist, he just had the blessing of an important Swiss gallerist and his guts to be trusted. In a way, it felt like home: his dad was fond of photography and his mom was passioned for fashion design. It was like following his parents' hidden dreams. And the process that mad him an artist also led to community building and to a life that was more fulfilling that anything he could ever imagine.

Now he use his platform and voice to really make a dent into the world. After a debut with sculptural paintings inspired by ideographic writing from southern Nigeria, the focus shifted to forgotten and disenfranchised communities in the Niger Delta: "a catalyst for transformation and change."

That's how the Blazing Century project takes shape: an alternative universe that redefines an exhausted environment, a collaborative project that facilitate change, where dialogue is encouraged as a practice and discipline. From the Niger delta to Western Cameroon, Ukpong's work deals with exploited communities, one-sided narratives and tired cliches, and overturns them all. In art's name, and quite simply, because it's the right thing to do.