Alawuala
Alawuala is the Earth Goddess in Igbo cosmology, and her name translates literally as “the land which is the ultimate earth.” Birthing humanity and life from Her primal womb, She incarnates the spiritual principles of the primordial Igbo High God, Chukwu’s feminine double, Eke-Nnechukwu. With Her connection to the primordial feminine, Alawuala prescribes the universal laws of existence which transcend all life, Nso Ala (Laws of the Earth Goddess), and transmits them to humanity in the blackness of Her womb. Her layered waist beads speak to Her fecundity and control of fertility in all dimensions of life. Her sinuous pose prefigures her zoomorphic terrestrial form as Eke-Nwe-Ohia, the sacred Igbo python.
Photographic Process
In the photographs of Infinite Essence and Cosmologies, Owunna leverages his training as an engineer to explore the nuances of darkness and light. He employs ultraviolet strobes, painted fluorescent backdrops, and carefully hand painted nude bodies of Black models that only glow under ultraviolet light. When he then photographs the models in total darkness, the shutter snaps, and for that fraction of a second, synchronized beams of ultraviolet light illuminate a glowing scene that reanimates tableaus of creation from the archive of African diasporic myth.