Mikael Chukwuma Owunna (born 1990) is an

African-American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American ...

photographer who currently lives and works in

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

Life

Owunna was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, of

Nigeria Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf o ...

n and

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

heritage. As a youth he attended

boarding school A boarding school is a school where pupils live within premises while being given formal instruction. The word "boarding" is used in the sense of "room and board", i.e. lodging and meals. As they have existed for many centuries, and now exten ...

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

, where he was bullied after

coming out Coming out of the closet, often shortened to coming out, is a metaphor used to describe LGBT people's self-disclosure of their sexual orientation, romantic orientation, or gender identity. Framed and debated as a privacy issue, coming out of ...

.Becky Harlan
"'Every Black Person Deserves To See Themselves This Way'"
,

NPR National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other ...

, March 3, 2019. In college he studied

engineering Engineering is the use of scientific method, scientific principles to design and build machines, structures, and other items, including bridges, tunnels, roads, vehicles, and buildings. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad rang ...

, earning a degree in Biomedical Engineering and History from

Duke University Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...

. In 2009 he received a Rothermere Scholarship to

Oxford University Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

, and in 2012 he was named a

Fulbright Scholar The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States Cultural Exchange Programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people of ...

. He spent his Fulbright year in

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

. While struggling to come to terms with his sexuality (he identifies as

queer ''Queer'' is an umbrella term for people who are not heterosexual or cisgender. Originally meaning or , ''queer'' came to be used pejoratively against those with same-sex desires or relationships in the late 19th century. Beginning in the lat ...

) he discovered photography, which became both a creative outlet and an escape.Amber Hickey and Anney Traymany
"Mikael Owunna's Photographs Show the Essence of Black Healing"
, ''

Aperture In optics, an aperture is a hole or an opening through which light travels. More specifically, the aperture and focal length of an optical system determine the cone angle of a bundle of rays that come to a focus in the image plane. An opt ...

'', June 4, 2020. He has mentioned

Octavia Butler Octavia Estelle Butler (June 22, 1947 – February 24, 2006) was an American science fiction author and a multiple recipient of the Hugo and Nebula awards. In 1995, Butler became the first science-fiction writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship. ...

and

Chinua Achebe Chinua Achebe (; 16 November 1930 – 21 March 2013) was a Nigerian novelist, poet, and critic who is regarded as the dominant figure of modern African literature. His first novel and ''magnum opus'', ''Things Fall Apart'' (1958), occupies ...

as influences on his work. He cites an exhibit of the work of

Zanele Muholi Zanele Muholi (born 19 July 1972) is a South African artist and visual activist working in photography, video, and installation. Muholi's work focuses on race, gender and sexuality with a body of work that dates back to the early 2000's, documen ...

as "the first time I had ever seen an image of another queer African person," and as part of the impetus for his first project, ''Limitless Africans''.Jake Naughton
"Pride and Self-Love in the L.G.B.T.Q. African Diaspora"
, ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', March 19, 2018. Owunna speaks English, French and

Mandarin Chinese Mandarin (; ) is a group of Chinese (Sinitic) dialects that are natively spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese, the official language of ...

Work

Of his work, Owunna says: "I am constantly thinking about how I can imagine and reimagine universes where people from marginalized backgrounds—particularly Black and LGBTQ people—can be full and complete individuals." In 2013 Owunna began work on ''Limitless Africans''. The book took six and a half years to create, during which Owunna traveled to ten countries across

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

and the

Caribbean The Caribbean (, ) ( es, El Caribe; french: la Caraïbe; ht, Karayib; nl, De Caraïben) is a region of the Americas that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands (some surrounded by the Caribbean Sea and some bordering both the Caribbean Se ...

to document the experiences of

LGBTQ ' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity. The LGBT term is a ...

African

immigrants Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not natives or where they do not possess citizenship in order to settle as permanent residents or naturalized citizens. Commuters, tourists, and ...

and

refugees A refugee, conventionally speaking, is a displaced person who has crossed national borders and who cannot or is unwilling to return home due to well-founded fear of persecution.

. "Growing up, I was told that it was 'un-African' to be gay and that

homosexuality Homosexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or sexual behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality is "an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions" to peop ...

was foreign to our culture. After enduring years of severe alienation from my Nigerian heritage and a series of

exorcism Exorcism () is the religious or spiritual practice of evicting demons, jinns, or other malevolent spiritual entities from a person, or an area, that is believed to be possessed. Depending on the spiritual beliefs of the exorcist, this may be ...

s in Nigeria, I started ''Limitless'' to reclaim my African-ness and queerness on my own terms." ''

'' described the book as "defiant and arresting, challenging notions of what queer people look like, what African people look like and the grace that comes from loving oneself." His project ''Infinite Essence'' grew out of frustration with the constant media images of Black bodies as sites of violence and death. "What is the impact that has when you see somebody who looks like you being killed all of the time?" The project's goal is "to counteract the pain of those photos, to create imagery that show the black body not as a site of death but as a site of magic." In February 2019 he received a $20,000 grant from the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council to complete the project."Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council Announces Lift Grant Awardees"
, Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council, February 13, 2019.

Exhibits, awards, and recognition

Owunna's work has been exhibited in the United States, Canada, and Belgium, and has received numerous awards and recommendations including the

YWCA The Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) is a nonprofit organization with a focus on empowerment, leadership, and rights of women, young women, and girls in more than 100 countries. The World office is currently based in Geneva, Swi ...

Racial Justice Award for Creativity and Innovation. In addition to the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council grant mentioned above, he has also received grants from the Fine Foundation, the Pittsburgh Endowment, and the A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust Fund. In 2018 he was awarded a Kathryn Davis Fellowship for Peace from

Middlebury College Middlebury College is a private liberal arts college in Middlebury, Vermont. Founded in 1800 by Congregationalists, Middlebury was the first operating college or university in Vermont. The college currently enrolls 2,858 undergraduates from all ...

References

External links

*
"Transcending the Body"

TED talk TED Conferences, LLC (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an American-Canadian non-profit media organization that posts international talks online for free distribution under the slogan "ideas worth spreading". TED was founded by Richard Sau ...

by Owunna, 2020
"Precolonial African Sexuality, Contemporary Homophobia, and #LimitlessAfricans"
lecture at

Museum of Art
"Four queer women defying the snow: Mikael Owunna's best photograph"
Interview by Dale Berning Sawa, ''The Guardian'', 2020. {{DEFAULTSORT:Owunna, Mikael Duke University alumni African-American photographers American people of Nigerian descent American people of Swedish descent 20th-century American photographers Queer artists People from Pittsburgh LGBT African Americans LGBT people from Pennsylvania 20th-century African-American artists 1990 births Living people 21st-century African-American people Fulbright alumni