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ARTIST STATEMENT

Like his mentor El Anatsui, Eke recycles—or up cycles—discarded materials as part of his method. Eke’s work often concerns water, and in “Dark Voyage” he assembles recycled shoes to evoke the enslaved African souls that crossed the Atlantic in crowded ships and had to assume new identities in the Americas, assimilating into “western” cultures. While evoking these cruel “transports,” this works speaks to ongoing issues of migration in many parts of our world today, with immigrants traveling by foot and by water. 

In Whitewash, the imprints on the soles of shoes reference the contributions or marks made by immigrants in nation building. Although immigrants have contributed immensely to the economic and social development of many societies, in most cases their contributions are rewarded with ingratitude, maltreatment, and outright denial, but, like the rubber employed in this installation, they endure and are not easily dissolved or subsumed.