Awol Erizku: Mystic Parallax

Born in Ethiopia and raised in the Bronx, Awol Erizku is a Los Angeles-based multidisciplinary artist and this is his first major monograph. Its black woven cover with a mirrored Nefertiti bust make it an artwork in itself. Erizku works across photography, video, painting, sculpture and installation, building an Afrocentric aesthetic he refers to as “Afro-esotericism”. His conceptual photographs of black cultural icons like Michael B. Jordan and Pharrell appear in the book alongside his still lifes, which are often groups of objects unconventionally placed together to create, in the words of Guggenheim curator Ashley James, ‘unending chains of significance.’ With Fine Arts degrees from the Cooper Union and Yale School of Art, Erizku knows deeply the Eurocentric notions of art that he rejects.