Description

When Water Wears Masks by Issac Oloche Johnson is one of three artworks exhibited in GroundWork Gallery’s Fluid Earth Exhibition. Proceeds from the prints go to the Niger Delta Community which enabled Johnson to be able to make the artworks.

When Water Wears Masks emerges from the natural optics of oil on water: shimmering swirls of ochre, brown and blue that mysteriously resolve into mask-like visages. The diagonal composition suggests flow, but the faces appear suspended, a haunting reminder of lives and spirits trapped in polluted waters. These masks are not carnival masks of joy, but funerary masks of grief: anonymous witnesses carved into the surface of the creek. The masks represent the double face of oil: promise and betrayal, wealth and waste, beauty and violence. Water should mirror life, but here it mirrors death. Instead of clarity, it produces distortion. Instead of reflecting faces of the living, it manufactures spectural masks.

This work insists that pollution is not invisible. It has a face, many faces. Water does not remain neutral it wears masks to speak, to accuse, to mourn – every drop carries memory and accusation.

When Water Wears Masks asks: whose faces do we see in polluted waters? The ancestors, the exploited or ourselves?

About the artist

Isaac Oloche Johnson describes himself as a code artisan. Offering a fresh technologically driven approach to engaging with environmental and social themes, Isaac Oloche Johnson has qualifications and experience both in applied psychology and computer science. He crafts immersive digital realms, blending tradition with technology. With a passion for African crafts and artistry, Isaac aims to redefine spatial understanding and enable innovative aesthetic approaches. As a recent Dreaming New Worlds Fellow at the Goethe Institute Nigeria, he explored the intersection of technology and artistry. His research project and interactive exhibition ‘We were here’ reimagined the act of excavation including cultural memory, identity and lost histories, to explore how extractivism affects physical and cultural landscapes. He is specially interested to pursue further projects in connection with Igbo African communities, inspired by traditional Igbo philosophies of nature and resource use Isaac aims to create a dynamic participatory digital archive that explores extractivism through Igbo cultural frameworks aiming to tell layered stories of land, loss and resilience.