- Ekow Nimako,42, is a Ghanaian-Canadian artist who creates bizarre structures using exclusively black Legos. In order to exhibit his work in Canada during Black History Month in 2014, he received financing for his project in 2012. He began creating Lego sculptures in 2012.
- Black mythical stories and otherworldly quests influence Nimako’s paintings. His “Building Black: Mythos” series includes artworks that show Anansi, an African trickster deity who frequently assumed the appearance of a spider, as an eight-limbed Black kid. His “Building Black: Graphica” series concentrates on written word and wild style graffiti.
- Since black is one of the most popular Lego hues and he enjoys the color, Nimako employs black Lego bricks for technical reasons. He thinks that the color black has a complex, wide-ranging, and gloomy spectrum. Young Black girls who didn’t get the chance to be conventional flower girls in the West have their purity gone in Nimako’s sculptures.
- In an effort to go beyond Lego’s artificial quality, he has aged and enriched the attractiveness of his sculptures. Each sculpture requires between 50 and 800 hours to build, and he anticipates that as he finds more Lego parts and experiments with new ways to make his creations more dynamic, the building process will get longer.
- Nimako is identified as a futurist who combines Africanfuturism, Afrofuturism, and Afrofantasy. He recreated the Ghanaian kingdom of the Middle Ages using almost 100,000 Lego pieces. His creation takes about 50-800 hours.
- Nimako reinvents historical accounts from sub-Saharan Africa in his “Buiding Black: Civilizations” series. He envisions a future that is welcoming, acknowledges the legacy of anti-Black racism, and values the contribution of afrofuturism to the ability to imagine a better future.
- Beyond the realm of art, even Lego has acknowledged Nimako’s creations. In February 2022, a Lego documentary based on his work was published. He is now creating a sculpture called “The Great Turtle Race,” which shows Black youngsters racing on the backs of two mythical turtles to capture youth.
Source:
CNN.com
