Nwaneri wins Spanish arts competition

Kelechi Nwaneri has emerged winner of the 12th edition of the `Spanish Festival and Traditional Celebrations’ arts competition.
He tops the list of 70 arts entries with the piece titled: ‘The Festival’.
Nwaneri told the News Agency of Nigeria on Wednesday that he was surprise with the outcome, since most of the arts that made the final round were equally good.
He said that, aside having healthy competitors, a lot of work was put in for the piece to emerge winner at the competition adding that, it took him three weeks and couple of days to produce the piece.
He added that the winning piece called the ‘The Festival’ was derived from the picture that has Nigerian and Spanish cultural similarities titled; Giant and big Heads.
He said: “In the festival piece I tried to create a similarity of a picture that shows the similarity between Nigeria and Spanish culture, so I picked the Spanish culture titled giant and big heads.
“Where mass of prominent people in the societies wore and people merry and dance around them, so I thought that is similar to our use of masquerades in Nigeria.
“Since the theme of the competition was to create a resemblance of the Spanish festivals and traditional celebrations and Nigerian culture.
“I did exactly that, using my style of pencil and acrylic paints. The Nigerian element in the piece is the masquerade in Anambra state that I painted.”
He added that, when he travels to Madrid he intends to see more contemporary arts and look for how to merge knowledge and prove his work.
Similarly, Sor Sen, who emerged the second runner up with the piece called `Power Play’ using oil on canvas, said that his piece was inspired by bull fighting and ram festival which depicts the ruler and the governed.
Sor Sen said: “It was inspired by Spanish bull fight and ram festival, what I did was to engage the relationship between the politicians and the elite, for me it came out like a metaphor.
“To express these ideas of how powerful few political elites are, and equally how powerless the masses are as indicated in the painting.
“Because the bull is an single animal representing a powerful ruler and the mass
es are people struggling to makes ends meet and that was what I wanted to express in the piece.”
Also, Odinakachi Okorafor, came in the third place with a piece called `Chirigotas de Cadiz’ using materials like mixed media of fabrics on canvas.
He said his inspiration came from the carnival that takes place in Cadiz in Spain, and it’s one of the most colourful in that area though carnivals takes places in every part of Spain.
Okorafor added that apart from the carnival there were other side attraction that makes it look most attractive, one of the groups that add glamour in it are called the Chirigotas.
He said: “The Chirigotas use just one instrument which is the guitar but yet its term as the high point of the carnival that was where I drew my inspiration.”
Also he noted that, his style of work expresses contemporary abstraction, but yet he sees it as cultural symbolism in contemporary society.
NAN reports that the winner was awarded with a trip to Madrid in February 2019 to visit ARCO, one of the major modern day art fairs in the world.