Wilfred UKPONG

BC1 : Vessel is a “Social Sculpture” project that is conceived to develop at a coastal shore location that connects with a major oil producing installation and a fishing community in the Niger Delta of Southern Nigeria. This project will culminate in form of a socially-engaged and site-specific installation, object-based performance and video documentation that will conflate around the making of large-scale (12×6 x 3 m) bio-chemical-anthropomorphic sculpture (drilling vessel) created in a fictitious narrative tale about a water goddess who is solicited to the land surface on a mission to unite peoples, communities and cultures. The main objective of creating this body of work is to engage within a “critical platform” which serve both as an “artwork” and a “social space” for experiment, debate, interaction and presentation while exploring uncharted cultural ideas and overlooked territories that can be reprocessed and re-examined towards new social, interdisciplinary and cross-cultural possibilities.