1960–present
Dilomprizulike
Dil-Humphrey Umezulike, known as Dilomprizulike, makes sculptural installations and performances out of old clothing and street rubbish. In Lagos he built the “Junkyard Museum of Awkward Things”, and from 2004 to 2007 his work travelled the world with the exhibition “Africa Remix”, from Düsseldorf and London to Paris, Tokyo and Johannesburg.
Biography
He calls his persona Thejunkmanfromafrika, “the junk man from Africa”. Under that name he also appeared on stage: in the performance “Professor Junk” he was seen at many stops of the large exhibition discussed below.
Dil-Humphrey Umezulike was born in 1960 in Enugu, Nigeria. He studied art at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, then went to Scotland and completed an MFA at the University of Dundee. He works in sculpture, performance and painting, but it was his installations made from found material that brought him recognition. His material is always the same: heaps of old clothing and other debris lying in city streets. He collects it, reworks it and builds it into sculptural objects and actions. He says himself that with these things he shows the position of many Africans, deprived of a voice and of opportunities. One such work is called “Wear and Tear”. In his explanation of it the artist writes that African urban communal life is full of overlooked and underrated things that strongly shape it. A person becomes alienated in his own society: he can no longer go back and pick up the fragments of his father’s shattered culture, yet he cannot keep pace with the white man’s world. The words “wear and tear” here, I think, refer both to clothes and to people.
In Lagos he created the “Junkyard Museum of Awkward Things”, a sculptural environment made from found objects. Later he made a version of it for the Oriel Mostyn Gallery in Llandudno, Wales.
From 2004 to 2007 his work was included in the exhibition “Africa Remix”, which toured many countries. The first stop was the Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf, followed by the Hayward Gallery in London, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm and the Johannesburg Art Gallery. In London he worked as a resident at Gasworks, an artists’ studio and gallery, preparing a piece for the Victoria and Albert Museum.
In 2010 he made “Busy Street” for the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art in Israel. It was built from local rubbish, and the artist conceived it as a reflection on Israeli consumer society.
Profile notes