oblivious utopias
Curated by; Ra-Twoine Fields - Nigel Richardson
As an emerging artist and autodidact, Ford has relied on personal research acumen, lived experience, cultural immersion and passion for navigating the art of selection and curation of elements. His studio practice expands several years with his process centering Akashic memory recovery and cultural archiving within an Afrofuturistic and postmodern framework.
There lies a beautiful tension nestled within the dialectic of oblivion and utopia. This oscillating synergy warps time and embraces past, present and future as content and context. As Ford world builds, he routes the complexities of truth behind history, varied cultural experience and post-modern possibility. Imaginative processing is compounded with in-depth research varying from text to video archives reflected through each layer of collage. Oblivious Utopias exists as a collection of glimpses into Afrocentric ethnography positioning the viewer at an axis of reflection and interpretation.
Ford molds several themes to his will, boldly blending together messages meant to be carried throughout time. Notes of hope, resistance, freedom, nostalgia, reverence, empowerment, and recall resonate in select works; shared consciousness and downloads to be encapsulated and communed with the masses. Ford intuitively combines the playful and intentional. Colors, text, images, and scenery overlap creating feelings of familiarity, uncertainty and wanderlust. Oblivious Utopias carries massive messages miniaturized and made approachable, revealing and creating time capsules for current and future generations.