Peter Uka

Novelist Zadie Smith commented that “historical nostalgia” was a sentiment not “available” to black people: “I can’t go back to the fifties because life in the fifties for me is not pretty, nor is it pretty in 1320 or 1460 or 1580 or 1820 or even 1960 in this country, very frankly.”

The large-scale oil paintings exude notions of nostalgia, a gaze on spaces long forgotten. The works timeless ability arise from a query, how do we document a history that was unwritten, and only told orally? Of historical memories recounted and not crystallized.