Rele Gallery, Los Angeles, is pleased to announce Uzo Anya, a highly anticipated solo exhibition by Nigerian visual artist Mavic Chijoke Okeugo, opening May 27, 2024, and on view through May 31, 2024. The exhibition marks Okeugo’s first solo presentation in Los Angeles and introduces a powerful new body of work that interrogates vision, perception, and cultural memory through contemporary fine art photography.

Uzo Anya, an Igbo phrase meaning “the way of the eye” or “the path of seeing,” serves as both the conceptual and philosophical anchor of the exhibition. Through meticulously constructed images, Okeugo explores how Black bodies—particularly Igbo women—are seen, remembered, and positioned within historical and contemporary visual narratives. The works challenge passive looking, instead inviting viewers into a reciprocal encounter where the gaze is returned with clarity and intent.

The exhibition features large-scale photographic works that blend documentary precision with painterly depth. Drawing from Igbo symbolism, ritual adornment, and ancestral presence, Okeugo creates images that exist between past and present, tradition and contemporary expression. Coral beads, textured surfaces, and controlled lighting function as visual language—signifiers of identity, dignity, and continuity.

Presented in Rele Gallery’s Los Angeles space, Uzo Anya positions African photography beyond ethnographic framing, asserting it as a site of conceptual rigor and emotional resonance. The exhibition aligns with Rele Gallery’s ongoing commitment to amplifying African and diasporic voices within global art discourse.

Speaking ahead of the opening, Okeugo notes that Uzo Anya is an invitation to reconsider how we look and what it means to truly see beyond surface representation and toward deeper cultural understanding.

The opening reception will take place on May 27, 2024, welcoming collectors, curators, press, and the public to engage with this compelling body of work.