My Grandfather was a wrestler.

My Great Grandfather was a writer.

“How the dead remain” Isaac. O. Delano, Soul of Nigeria.

I have been drawing my grandfather repeatedly, in an exercise to understand the concept of the icon. In Tina Campts listening to Images she talks about the haptic quality of images. Every time I draw him, it’s different, he is different. The charcoal becomes my connection to the feeling of his presence, but also the fragile connection to how to retain stories of his past life. I am particularly interested in how we tell stories of African icons, writers, historians, and everyday people. The icon both affirms who he was but also in the repetition but there is also a loss of self - which is he? is he all? The over-saturation of imposed identity creates a noise, where somehow the autonomy of self can be lost.