Time is the anchor of man’s existence. Verily, there is no disconnect between Life, Evolution, and Time. Dated back, Art tells stories and documents history. We have encountered different works of art that carry diverse and evolving messages. Artists have mastered the ways of unravelling the world’s mystery in their works and documenting it—through art, their best form of expression— as their quota to living.
They see beyond the ordinary and take us on a journey to an alternate universe in the one we inhabit but are oblivious of. Leonardo Da Vinci did not paint the “Mona Lisa” for the sake of painting alone. He needed to write the history behind her lifetime and manifestation. There is no other tongue he knows best than his language; Art.
Once upon an era, some individuals discovered easier ways to live. Men like Willard Boyle and Martin Cooper have booked history with their innovations that save the world, but Owo, on his part, is creating the future as we journey through this past. After all, the “future” is a modification of the past by those living in the present.
Owo Anietie
Who is Owo Anietie?
Owo Anietie—a Nigerian digital Afrofuturism artist, an international visual storyteller and an NFT artist—is one of these men that unveil the extraordinary out of the ordinary. Some humans are accustomed to unlearning the past, but along the line forget the glory of leveraging on the blessings of the past to build a better future.
“Owo tells key African stories through an Afrofuturist lens. Through his work at Afrodroids, He aims to connect Africa’s rich history to her current predicament and a future so dystopian if nothing is done today, all through his technology-based work”. —A perfect summary describing the essence of his craft and all he stands for in the Art-NFT community, from his bio.
Maybe you are one of the myriads of minds that find it hard to wrap their heads around what Afrofuturism is all about. Or you cannot comprehend how NFTs work, especially in the Art world. Perhaps, it is all because you are not clear on the connection between these supposedly “disjointed” careers, then read this article in toto and immerse in the world of greater digital possibilities.
How NFTs, Digital Artists and Art Connect
Since the emergence of virtual and augmented reality, gradually, these innovations have seen a great affinity and acceptance from humans and earth-dwellers. Communication ensues in the physical realm for centuries and technology enthusiasts have discovered —better said created— a spectacular mode of communication with the metaverse world.
What does this mean? Simply put, most human activities and engagements are being shifted to the virtual world, which usually is either in virtual reality(3-quarter virtualised systems) or augmented reality(1-quarter immersion into a virtualised system), all enabled by the 3D technology.
NFT is a digital(virtual) asset that is sold, created, and transferred on a Blockchain(virtualised system). These kinds of assets derive their uniqueness from the glory of not being replaceable by another asset of their nature. They are a perfect manifestation of the saying, “every man for himself”.
NFTs—non-fungible tokens—are simply put as pieces/pieces of work that are limited in production. For example, an author publishes a book with a specific number of 10, implying that just 10 different individuals would ever own a copy of this book.
How would that happen? No other person can copy or recreate the same copy of the book, even if it is sold, the owner sells all rights of ownership with it and can only get it back if he/she decides to purchase that exact asset(book) again. If you buy another that looks like it is the 11th or 25th copy, it is different from the 10 of 10 copies that were initially created.
With this establishment, artists find the NFT system a better way to make their art exceptional. Beyond the colours and patterns, outside the corners of perfect blends, hue strokes and dashes across the canvas, they needed to infuse exclusivity like their crafts.
Following the embrace of digital art and awakening of virtual reality, the creative focus has shifted to what the “future” really is—a uniformly and heavily digitalised world. And fortunately, Owo has been there before us, testing the waters for Africa and building viable habitats with his collections of NFTs in the metaverse world.
A quick background check on Owo— 2009 saw his noble entry into the art industry. For a creative person with gusto and a keen interest in his tradition and culture, he delved fully into creating exceptional arts that reminisce, promote, amplify, and tell the stories of our ancestors. Owo derives pleasure adroitly crafting drawings and commissioned paintings of several characters from Nigerian histories.
With a deeply-rooted knowledge in animation, illustrations, motion designing and advertising, he deemed it fit to channel his professional skills into “what could be/what was supposed to be” around the African narrative. Afrofuturism is the basic philosophical study of the connection between African diaspora traditions and culture. It explores both the history and science parts of these sets of Africans.
Thus, it is expedient that we explore the labyrinth of his creation, ranging from his magical views on the essence of nature and its relevance to man’s survival to the incredible series of mind-boggling collections of art that speeds up our rate of seeing what is ahead of us—the Future.
Having worked on different personal and combined NFT projects and collections. Owo proved his superhero abilities with his Afrodroids collection.
Afrodroids—The Inception
It all began with the tussle for power, the battle of supremacy amongst men. Who will submit to the will of the other? Who holds the mantle of sovereignty? Conflicts ensue and all social groups and fractions of human existence picked to themselves at war. All using their available resources to end the being of the other and the rest was history the one Afrodroids hinges its manifestation on.
Extinction is a mystery our current generation, habitats of the world, have not experienced yet. When we do, we won’t be here to document it and yes, if there is anyone with the spring of life after us, they might find traces of our feet in the sands of time.
Owo Anietie isn’t one of these “imaginary” creative persons that let the power of foresight die in their minds before conception. He plunged into what it could be like to have humans wiped out of the earth’s surface when the last earth individual breathed his last and birthed Afrodroids.
Imagine it is 3045, all lives have ended and all you could be is a non-fungible token, an NFT with dualistic features of being between a human and a machine. But still, a question lingers, asking, what exactly are we? Robots? Machines? Humans? Or humanoids?
Why Afrodroids?
Owo challenged his ability to outdo himself at his craft by creating at least an artwork each day that passed until he made a grand amount of 12,117 unique digital arts for this collection. Fortunately, beyond the nature and relevance of these assets are systems that profit humanity.
For each Afrodroids NFT that got sold to 3,600+ owners within the sales time, all sold out, 20% gets remitted to the charity system that helps African girl children get closer to their dream through the Dream Catcher academy.
Being a PFP(profile picture) NFTs, Afrodroids had 12,117 digital collectibles sold out quickly because of their usability by the owners and individuals that have shifted their minds to living in the virtual world. PFP NFTs are primarily used for identification in the digital space.
After all, we need signs, names, symbols, numbers, pictures, etc, to represent ourselves. Hence, PFP NFTs serving as profile pictures for Internet users makes them one of the most popular NFTs—an attestation to their colossal sales in a very short period—11 minutes into launching on Opensea.
The Nsibidi
Communication is the tool for sustaining existence. Without proper transfer and recipient of messages between men, life would have been long forgotten as there would be disarray and disorganisation in our environment.
Communication is dated back in history and Africa has one of the most beautiful modes of communication—languages— which brings us back to one that stood out for Owo, once again, as the rich history of Africa has always marvelled him and triggered his enthusiastic creations.
The Nsibidi is an ancestral language that uses symbols and marks to pass information amongst humans in a limited form. It originated from the Southern part of Nigeria. This language tickled Owo’s fancy enough that made him create 2 distinctively great collections of digital arts from it— the Nsibidi-ancestral language and the Nsibidi, Chapter 2.
It’s believed that the language was developed by the Ekpe people, even as unsubstantiated as it was. It was first described thus in 1904 and it was primarily divided into two parts; the sacred version and the publicly used version.
The colonial era saw it come alive on traditional and local household items in the South-Eastern part of Nigeria e.g calabashes, walls, swords, leaves, etc. But Owo has them on human foreheads, they wear them like an armour of honour and a bigger pictorial representation that infuses man’s significance in this NFT art collection. He believes that moving on from the past should not include doing away with our priced heritages and hence, he is constantly documenting these days and treasures in his works, over and over again.
Other groundbreaking feats Owo has that penetrated the market are the various collectables of digital arts he has created and circulated the world on his selling platforms. One of them is the Headrest.
The Headrest
With all stories comes a different plot and simultaneously, with every random surface belief we put to things around us, there is a deeper meaning and essence attached to the creation of such items. The Headrest is initially supposed to be an object of sleep support for their heads in Africa, especially for women with complicated hairdos. Beyond this is the abstract importance of personal heritage, social honour, self-care prioritisation and spiritual protection from nightmares and wild dreams.
There is a high chance of attachment between a Headrest and its owner and for this, whenever the owner parts with existence and dies, their headrests are buried with them. This art is essentially emphasising the glory that surrounds the creation of Headrest for Africans.
The Unclaimed Loots saw a great deal of acceptance and connection from Owo’s audience both locally and internationally, just like all of his other incredible creations with art. History has it that during our times serving the “Lords”—the precolonial era— as power is not a basic necessity we could control as Africans, lots of our artefacts and treasures are not in our possession.
And when time brought us Freedom from our white masters’ chains, they cart away parts of us; a great part of our prestige and heritage. The Unclaimed Loots are simply collections that are immortalising the items and historical objects of our culture that most likely cannot be retrieved anymore.
With Owo’s inherent modern approach to African history, he tried and successfully recreated a series of these cultural artefacts to what they would look like in this time —“the Future”— as another manifestation of his Afrofuturism art career.
Conclusion
Owo Anietie’s interest is deeply rooted in the wide, unending, and rich expanse of African cultural history and traditions. Also, he wants more Africans to tap into the unsaturated NFTs space by creating endlessly with their original talents to be able to contribute to the collective growth of our African societies.
All his activities, charities, and engagements are a subtle source of inspiration for young minds to tap into and create their magic with Africa. He would love to see you(creatives, artists, and scientists) do more towards the African environment with the leverage on African culture, as much as we promote and uphold its beauty.
