Nigerian-Swedish photographer, Mikael Owunna uses fluorescent body paint and ultraviolet light to transform the black body into celestial beings, magical and otherworldly. Owunna says he grew weary of the barrage of violent, dehumanizing imagery of black people he saw in the media.
“Black people dead and dying. Being gunned down by police officers, drowning and washing up on the shores of the Mediterranean, starving and suffering in award-winning photography. The trope of the black body as a site of death is everywhere,” he says in his artist statement.Owunna wanted to counteract the pain of those photos, to create imagery that showed the black body not as a site of death but as a site of magic.
