Eto Otitigbe

Patience on a Monument (2016) treated aluminum plates, 16” x 20” each, George Washington Carver Museum

These engravings on aluminum plate are blackened using the same oxidation process that is applied to blacken low cost firearms; thereby linking the work to gun violence. A Delaunay algorithm is used to triangulate portraits into linear patterns; this type of geometric abstraction is used to symbolize the impossibility to fully understand - and so perfectly depict- another person. Some personality features are perceived, some character traits are understood, but the distortion remains and some features remain in the dark, concealed. Chance, luck and the unknown are the final factors that shape the distorted, subjective portraits we make of them.