"Lord Efu's Demon Sons (Corruption Sequence)" explores how a history of images create a sense of cultural identity. Chioma draws us into her world of demigods and demons, creating tensions of lightness and dark, the authentic and the fantastic. As a daughter of two worlds—Nigeria and the United States—she has been granted a cultural saliency that allows her to be a chameleon, both an outsider and an insider. Her delicate and layered works borrow from the mythologies of the pre-Columbian Americas and West Africa, as well as the visual vocabularies of American folk art and Japanese manga. They reflect an affinity for transcultural bricolage as a tool for subverting the Eurocentric art histories and present-day cultural imperialism.
"Lord Efu's Demon Sons (Corruption Sequence)" is part of a body of work titled "Rituals for a New Direction" that was shown by Catinca Tabacaru at Spring/Break in 2018. The Perez Art Museum acquired "Anwulili Made Us in Her Likeness (Conception Sequence)" and "Our Conception" - the two other works in the series in which Ebinama creates a new myth. We witness the goddess Anwulili creating life in her likeness... only to see that life corrupted by the demon Lord Efu."
