BOOKS
The Colour of our Hearts is the Colour of our City, Lagos City.
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Book/Exhibition Catalogue, by Amarachi Okafor.
September, 2021
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*The Colour of our Hearts is the Colour of our City is a touring project that moves from city to city, adapting to the story of each city that it arrives at.
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Exploring bags and boxes as tools for containment, in and of themselves, The Colour of our Hearts is the Colour of our City, 2015-2019 is people-focused, and affectionately themed so. This one-piece exhibition is participatory (with audiences) and performative (by the audience and the artist).
The physical sculpture installation tries to activate the senses, a city setting, with pouches in seating, as people living in clusters, on streets, within closed and open walls.
Cities are made and built by people - all the people in them, not just some. Each one of us is a stakeholder and through our actions or inactions, we have the ability to affect the overall feel of our city in some capacity or other.
Using individual bags as objects that aid us to think about the human being as entities that have the capacity to hold and to contain, may we bear in mind that we have the responsibility to be better, and to make better, the spaces where we stand.
The Colour of our Hearts is the Colour of our City, Abuja City.
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Book/Exhibition Catalogue, by Amarachi Okafor.
September, 2020
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*The Colour of our Hearts is the Colour of our City is a touring project that moves from city to city, adapting to the story of each city that it arrives at.
A book documenting my solo exhibition in collaboration with Thought Pyramid Art Gallery, Abuja, Nigeria.
With this I question, What is my contribution ‘in colour’ to the spaces where I am given to be active at – Black, Red, White, Pale, peaceful, Cool, Harsh or Ugly ….?
How do we live and how do we love? What is the colour of my heart?
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The exhibition showed the Installation The Colour of our Hearts is the Colour of our City, alongside 12 other artworks comprising Paintings and Sculptures.​​
Ask Yourself.
​Book/Exhibition Catalogue, by Amarachi Okafor.
Project produced in October/November 2024. Book published in 2021 as a Book Work and a Print Documentation of the project.
This book is a component of the Ask Yourself project, which I produced in 2014 for the National Art Competition (Nigeria)that year. It is an 'Art Book', as well as a communication agent documenting the voices of the participating audiences (the public). It is set in Nigeria.
Ask Yourself is an art of sensitisation, a catalyst for positive change that posed (poses) as a game, providing audiences the opportunity on many levels to think/rethink our 'individual' contribution to this society where we belong. The single artwork comprised: 4 paintings, 4 Artist-Books, One Book Work, The Installation, and a Film.
How do we live? How do we affect things and other people by the way that we act?
What can we individually do to improve everything?
I aim at collective societal positive transformation. When we can look inwards to ourselves first, then chances are that we may want to start growing ideas and methods for constructive change towards achieving an admirable society.
Ask Yourself at its' first engagement, worked actively with up to 400 people as collaborators, assistants, volunteers, and participants.​
This project was an artistic/curatorial experiment. This book documents that experiment.
Our focus was on Identity. What is my Identity? Am I African?
I am Bahamian. I eat Conch Salad was a cross-cultural art experience that I produced in collaboration with The Hub Gallery, Nassau; Popopstudios, Nassau, and fashion designers and visual artists (of African descent) of The Bahamas. All the collaborators lived in Nassau, the Bahamas.