As Uzor states, “I’m just the tool here, the idea decides.” This exhibition is a testament to that philosophy—a collection of pieces that resist the idea of mastery or completion, embracing instead the beauty of the unresolved.
Austin Uzor’s latest exhibition is a journey into the tension between belonging and displacement. Across a series of 21 panels, this body of work rejects a singular theme, instead capturing the chaotic beauty and imperfection of Uzor’s ongoing search for a place to call home. It is an endeavor which he acknowledges is both emotional and physical —one that is deeply personal yet universally relatable. Each piece serves as a snapshot of his inner dialogue, a meditation on the struggle between holding onto the past and navigating the uncertainty of the present.
This exhibition marks a pivotal moment in Uzor’s career as he peels back layers of himself with a new and raw vulnerability, both personally and artistically. Defying the onus upon artists to only show perfected and “finished” work, Uzor resists the inclination to create what is “pretty”. Eschewing his technical background as a painter, he instead works in what he describes as an “exhausting and therapeutic” state of searching, one in which landscapes from memory, dreams, and imagination take shape on the canvas, emerging slowly over time. These landscapes are not meant to represent a real physical place, but instead to capture and evoke a psychological space—one where the artist, and by extension the viewer, confronts feelings of displacement and identity.
Uzor views his artistic process as a constant negotiation between “what I know, what I don’t know, and what I’m able to acquire.” It’s a journey he admits to having a love-hate relationship with, as it fluctuates between moments of therapeutic release and violent emotional struggle. Yet, it is this refusal to settle into routine or grow comfortable that Uzor believes stops the conversation with his material from becoming “one-sided”. As Uzor says, he must “check my ego at the door” and instead allow the idea itself to guide the work.
Although Uzor’s migration from Nigeria to the U.S. informs his narrative, he invites the audience to look beyond immigration as the sole lens through which to view his work, and to instead consider broader themes of longing, transition, and the human experience of not quite fitting into any one place. His works here, shaped like postcards, become small fragments of memory stitched together, in an effort not to provide closure, but to document the ongoing search for it.
