Mikael Owunna discusses the richness of his photo series Infinite Essence

"The trope of the Black body as a site of death is everywhere," writes Mikael Owunna. "Being gunned down by police officers, drowning and washing up on the shores of the Mediterranean, starving and suffering in award-winning photography," these images permeate mainstream news, our social media feeds and are a constant stream of visual trauma. For Owunna, these images became a catalyst to transfigure the Black body from a site of death and state violence to transcendent eternal beings.

In 2017, Owunna began Infinite Essence, a series of glowing, ethereal photographs that elevate Black bodies to the cosmos. Owunna paints his models with fluorescent paint and uses his engineering background to enhance a standard flash with an ultraviolet bypass filter rendering only ultraviolet light. The resulting images expose viewers to what they might not otherwise see: a metaphor for the beauty, joy, and power of Black life that is often omitted from popular narratives. Infinite Essence is a haven – a safe space from centuries of systemic oppression. Owunna's muses are floating, content, and infinitely secure.

I spoke with Owunna to learn more.

Jon Feinstein in conversation with Mikael Owunna

Infinite Essence: "Emem" 2018 © Mikael Owunna

Jon Feinstein: This is the first conversation I’ve hosted over Zoom. Let’s hope it records! You were saying earlier that since quarantine, you’ve been doing a lot of virtual studio visits?

Mikael Owunna: Yes – it’s been an interesting format for showcasing the work, one that detaches us from considerations of geography. You don't have to go to New York anymore to have meetings, for example. You can have them from wherever. I think that's one unexpected change, and a benefit in some ways, as quarantine is changing what connection looks like. I now use PowerPoint and Zoom to guide curators and collectors through my work and process.

Feinstein: I’ve been following Infinite Essence since seeing it in the hotel lobby at the PhotoLucida portfolio reviews last year. I’ve always thought of it as a kind of holistic body of work – not necessarily something with a linear timeline, but still I’m curious - how did you originally conceive of it and the process behind it?

Owunna: I am a scientist at heart, and my process is based on the scientific method. I start with a question, and then I pose visual hypotheses on how to answer it.

The question I asked myself here was: how can I transfigure Black bodies from sites of death and state violence into transcendent forms, into vessels of eternal, cosmic life?

Infinite Essence: "Kinya" 2017 © Mikael Owunna

Feinstein: What happened next?

It was a very broad question, so I experimented broadly before arriving at my current methodology. I hypothesized that light had the power to transform my figures, so I began by experimenting with light painting. I would stage my camera on a long exposure and stream lights around them. This created energetic auras around the figures but did not transfigure the bodies themselves. Seeking to transform the body, I turned then to projectors and projected patterns of the ocean and nebular space directly onto my figures. This technique, however, also illuminated the backgrounds, which distracted from the attention I wanted solely placed on the Black body.

In both instances, I failed to produce images that resonated as responses to my original question. I turned to my childhood to seek additional inspiration and recalled how I had found personal solace and transformation in the Final Fantasy videogame series. I began watching an image from the opening sequence of Final Fantasy XI that I had found particularly salient at the time, and viewing it as an adult, I saw the power for transfiguration embodied not in the light presented in the image, but the Blackness from which light emerged. This unleashed a tidal wave of ideation beginning with glow-in-the-dark paints, followed by - ultimately - fluorescent paints paired with ultraviolet light.

I constructed my own flash that only transmits ultraviolet light. This entire process unfolded over the course of several months of serial testing and experimentation. I then spent several more months experimenting with painting techniques, from tribal paints to the celestial forms we now see.The very first image in the entire testing phase was a light painting photograph of a friend from my Limitless African series, which looks totally different from Infinite Essence. They were fully clothed, face-down on a bed wearing a baseball cap with a dimly lit lamp nearby illuminating them and 4 streaks of light zig-zagging over their head as a dream cloud. It’s never been released.

Feinstein: Until now, right?! Can we publish it in this interview?

Owunna: Wow, haha, I don't think so!

Infinite Essence: "The Keymakers" 2019 © Mikael Owunna

Feinstein: Haha, ok. A while ago you mentioned that this work was also a salve for your experience with depression in addition to the social and cultural issues at play...

Owunna: Having struggled with depression in the past, I have felt hollow in my body before. Transfiguring bodies from sites of violence to transcendent cosmic vessels is absolutely a salve for that experience as well. I also have photographed myself for the series, painting my own body, sitting nude, and hovering in total darkness for three hours with my camera shutter and flash illuminating my body at set intervals. Undergoing this experience as both photographer and subject, I was able to see my body no longer as an empty vessel, but as an incarnation of the eternal possibilities of the Blackness from which it emerged with each flash.

The camera is a powerful apparatus with which to encode stories like this. Photographs are documents, testaments to a lived reality, a form of objective truth. When I transfigured my own body in total darkness with paints and a flash of ultraviolet light, and subsequently viewed it on the back of my camera, I saw “truth.” The photograph became an intervention, a challenge to the reality I thought to be true, and an elixir transporting me to and from a primordial state.

Infinite Essence: "James" 2018 © Mikael Owunna

Feinstein- Can you talk a bit about how this idea of objective truth plays out for you?

Owunna: Yes, I have been meditating quite a bit recently on photographic surrealism and Edward Weston’s bell peppers. As a viewer, I am consistently struck by his “Pepper No. 30”: the bell pepper’s bodacious curvature, form, body texture, and dark, womb-like embrace of the background. Does this imaged bell pepper remain a bell pepper at all? I see clearly how our notion of the real, objective truth of a bell pepper is inherently challenged by this image, manipulated by the lens, the camera, and Weston as camera operator to create a new world.

There's a play that the photograph can have in a similar fashion with the objective, real, and surreal that I see as an incredibly powerful locomotive for transformation. Harold Bloom described the American Sublime as the “ambition of transcendence,” and I see that ambition exemplified in that Weston photograph and my work. This transcendence is disorienting for viewers of photographs, and I know that many people see my work and initially think instead, “Oh, that's a cool digital art piece.”

Infinite Essence: Self-portrait, "Chukwuma" 2018

Feinstein: I have to admit, when I first saw them, I assumed there was some level of digital manipulation.

Owunna: Yes! But when you see these images as photographs - vessels of objective truth - they shift our notions of reality. Similarly to how “Pepper No. 30” is both pepper and not pepper, I am trying to contort our ideas of “what is” and the way in which we visualize and understand the Black body and its relationship with primordial space. How can we play with this in the real plane of the photograph?

Feinstein: You’re working with this perceived digital-ness yet it’s totally straight. So much of the technical aspect of your photos comes from your background as an engineer. Are you still practicing as an engineer outside of photography?

Owunna: No. I studied engineering in college, but that was the same time I started doing photography as a hobby – that's when photography really captured me.

Infinite Essence: "Uche" 2019 © Mikael Owunna

Feinstein: When I first saw your work, aside from the digital-ness we discussed, my next thought was its connections to Afro-futurism. But I haven't seen any references to it in your statement, or in other interviews. Is it a point of interest for you?

Owunna: There is a strain of artists who have been labeled ‘Afro-futurist’ who, similarly to myself, draw from African spiritual systems. For example, Sun Ra’s work is a powerful exploration of Kemetic traditions. And borrowing from Sun Ra’s work, I tend to see myself more specifically as an Astro-Black mythologist as described by scholar Marques Redd. In his explication, the astro communicates how human life in many African traditions is in constant communication with interstellar and planetary contexts, the Black evokes Blackness as a divine, cosmic principle of the universe, and African mythology serves as a mode of knowledge that fuses science, religion, and art to transform human consciousness.

With this background, I am interested in reviving indigenous African notions of time. I am deeply concerned with the future while deconstructing and reconstructing the past and present as well.

Feinstein: Are there other influences at play?

Owunna: I always cite Chinua Achebe, particularly his discussion of the function of the ‘chi’ within Odinala, our Igbo spiritual system. For example, just as you and I are sitting here on Zoom, speaking with one another, our chis, our spirit guides, are also convening with one another on the spiritual plane. Achebe posits that each of our chis are but one ray of the infinite essence of the sun.

And so all of our chis are connected to the sun, Anyanwu, and to one another.

Meet Mikael Owunna. Portrait by NickCaito

Feinstein: With that said, do you see utopian connotations as far as how you’re elevating the bodies – bringing them to a space – a place of healing?

Owunna: Instead of “utopia,” I invite the viewer to see the Infinite Essence series from a Black cosmological frame. Rather than elevating the bodies into utopia (which comes from the Greek words “eu” and “topos,” meaning nowhere), I see the work as transporting us to a Blackness which symbolically embodies the depths of the primeval ocean, the planes of interstellar space, and the womb which births both the universe and humanity. This is a space of healing and rejuvenation because this infinite Blackness is the origin of all life and existence.

Feinstein: Getting a little deeper into the series and the specific photographs, how important are the individual identities in your work vs the grand scale of how the series represents liberation? Is it a universal/ collective notion?

Owunna: This is another interesting aspect of the work. I actually have hours of recorded interviews with each individual in the project, and each piece is named after the sitter. However, the interviews themselves have yet to be released. In these conversations, I discuss the work and the sitter’s experience before, during, and directly after their photoshoot and then again after they view their images for the first time. I have released an excerpt from one to date but have not yet had time to sit with the entirety of this material.

These individual identities and conversations, although not yet public-facing, shape the direction of each photoshoot. For example, with Sam (excerpted above), as a cis-heterosexual Black man in the military, the theme of transfiguration brought us to poses, colors, and images that explored tenderness and softness. There is a light dance and reflection of said themes in his body, here transformed into an ethereal, cosmic vessel.

On the grand scale, I was also curious to explore the notion of the body within this culture and across time. The spark for the project for me was seeing the body of Michael Brown, it was seeing the murder of Philando Castille. It was seeing all of these people being murdered and their bodies mounted on public display.

Infinite Essence responds to these images of the Black body with my own transcendent forms traced with a Black cosmological frame.

Infinite Essence: "Sam" 2018 © Mikael Owunna

Feinstein: What’s your relationship to the people in each photo?

Owunna: When I was beginning the work, there was quite a bit of overlap between models in the Infinite Essence series and some of the participants in my Limitless Africans work. I already had experience photographing them, and I wanted people who would be comfortable with the process. So, I worked with them. Beyond those individuals, I found other sitters through friends. Lately, I’ve been working with a lot of dancers and performers.

Feinstein: Are those images more dynamic – or are you getting more from them because of their wider extreme physical abilities?

Owunna: For dancers, their art form is their bodies and movement. There is a dynamism that they bring to the images because they understand movement as a space for expression. I think there is a particular type of dynamism that comes from images with the dancers.

Feinstein: How are they responding to seeing their images in this elevated, magical, freeing capacity? Were there any responses you didn’t expect?,

Owunna: When I was beginning the work, I had no idea how people were going to respond to it because it was a new methodology - a new space of exploration. I think the quote that touched me the most was from a friend who I'd also photographed for my Limitless Africans series. After they saw their Infinite Essence images, I was nervous, thinking, “Oh gosh, they're not gonna like it.” And then they saw the images and began crying. They told me that their whole life they had dreamt of being adorned with stars and that every Black person deserves to see themselves in this way.

Feinstein: That must have been incredibly emotional and confidence-boosting for you + the series…

Owunna: I tried to make work that was foremost for me, but hearing that it had that effect on someone else was impactful.

Feinstein: You’ve talked a bit about how this work came out of seeing images of Black bodies murdered by the police. I think back to growing up in NYC in the 90s and hearing about Rodney King in LA, and then Abner Louima and Amadou Diallo. Those are just three examples, and this isn’t new. But now we have smartphones and body cameras which have brought so much more light to it. It’s more in the forefront in the case of George Floyd. Has that shift of visualization and the attention to these recent murders impacted how you think about this work or how people are responding to it?

Owunna: I still see so much of my original intention captured in the work. I began this series because I was deeply shaken in 2014 by the murder of Michael Brown Jr. in Ferguson, MO, shot and killed by Darren Wilson, a white police officer. Brown was murdered by police, and his body was left in the street for hours. The media then published and distributed the image of his body around the world without the consent of his family. As the years have passed, there has been an incessant flow of images of Black people dead and dying in the media, being shot and killed by police officers, washing up on the shores of the Mediterranean, and starving to death on the continent. This year, we add to the tally George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and countless others.

It has been 6 years now, and I still have yet to see an image of a dead white body in the media, while I have grown numb to seeing videos of Black people being murdered on television. I see this as a strategy of white supremacy, where violence against the Black body becomes banal. Blackness becomes a site of death, rather than a divine, cosmic principle of the universe and the origin of existence, as described in our indigenous African cosmologies.

Feinstein: What do you hope people get from this work?

Owunna: Exploring the intersections of visual media with engineering, optics, the Black body, and queerness, my work seeks to elucidate an emancipatory vision of possibility that pushes Black people beyond all boundaries, restrictions, and frontiers. In this vision, we open our eyes to the cosmic forms inherent in our Blackness. By opening our eyes, we illuminate the universe and reveal the existence of all things in their formation, in the stead of Amma, the Dogon creator god. I hope that my work can ignite this ritualized eye-opening in the viewers.

Feinstein: Since I first saw your work last year at Photolucida, I keep seeing more and more curators getting familiar with your work. Aperture wrote about you. NPR wrote about you. We had a conversation for VICE about your series LImitless Africans last year. Collectors are buying your work.

Does having a heavier presence in the public eye change how you think about your work?

Owunna: It is great to get attention for your work, but it can also be easy to be seduced away from pursuing one’s artistic vision for the purpose of pursuing a public audience. For that reason, I have found a silver lining in the cloud of quarantine and shutdowns. I am grateful for the opportunity to retreat somewhat and sharpen my vision. I’ve appreciated having this time to research, think more deeply, and return to indigenous African cosmologies. I'm focusing on these cosmologies and this larger framework of Astro-Black mythology more than anything right now.

Feinstein: A while ago you mentioned getting flooded with comments when it was originally featured on NPR. Shifting back to my question about public response – have there been any responses to your work recently that were particularly meaningful to you?

Owunna: The comment that stood out most for me came from a 60-year-old Black woman. She messaged me in reference to an image I have of Uche, a curvy, Black, female-presenting person. She told me that her whole life she'd hated her body. And for the first time in 60 years, when she saw that image of Uche, she felt a sense of calm.

Feinstein: That’s incredibly touching...

Owunna: That one touched me on a personal level. Lately, the comments have been more like, “Wow, thank you for opening up my eyes around these possibilities.” I think that's really important because there was a point at which I could not turn on the TV without seeing George Floyd being murdered. I'm happy that people are able to see my images and think, “Oh, there's a different way that we can think about this in our culture.”

Feinstein: The intention of the project seems to be coming full circle. I tend to ask this of a lot of photographers working in long term series and I think it’s especially relevant here: Given your discussion of African cosmologies and the ideas of reinterpreting this work over time, do you see what could signal an end or completion to it?

Owunna: I see influences from Infinite Essence that will carry over into other artistic media. So I'm thinking about how that might play out. Infinite Essence draws from, and will be as well, an infinite universe.

In the Dogon tradition, as I referenced earlier, creation emerged when the Creator Amma opened their eyes. I want my work to be a universe where you can see and experience an array of representation that really opens our eyes to what's possible. There are so many ways that I can approach these questions, and, as an artist, I am also just beginning to open my eyes to what’s possible. I see this as just the beginning of a larger exploration.

Astro-Black Mythology: In Conversation with Mikael Owunna