One Artist's Struggle for Integrity

Join us at 21c in welcoming artist, Ajamu Kojo for his closing keynote lecture entitled, "One Artist's Struggle for Integrity."

This event is free and open to the public, as a program of the Northwest Arkansas Community College's Spring Arts and Culture Festival!

About SACF 2025

The NorthWest Arkansas Community College Spring Arts & Culture Festival is a multi-day, interdisciplinary event series that brings together artists, academics, intellectuals, and the community to reflect on an annual theme. This year, NWACC's Spring Arts & Culture Festival will take place Monday, March 3rd to Thursday, March 6th, 2025.

All events are free & open to the public. Events include live performances, guest speakers, generative artmaking, dance, music, film, art exhibits, and more!

It's often said that the best learning happens on the edge of our comfort zone. As artists, community members, and scholars, how do we negotiate the line between stability and calculated risk? What risks have shaped history and will shape our future as a collective or within a given field? How does risk shape art, culture, and innovation?

Join us for Spring Arts & Culture Festival 2025 to reflect on RISK across academic division, artistic field, and community experience.

About Ajamu Kojo

Ajamu Kojo is a figurative painter and filmmaker based in Brooklyn. As a scenic artist, his projects include Law & Order, Boardwalk Empire, Vinyl, BULL and more. Alongside working on television and film productions, Kojo also develops independent film projects and fine artwork. His artwork is a critical analysis of social, political and cultural issues through slice of life, voyeurism, and storytelling. Kojo is a native of Little Rock, Arkansas. He majored in film and television production and minored in theatre arts at Howard University.

Artist Statement

My work takes a critical view of social, political and cultural issues through story; slices of life and moments of voyeurism. Oftentimes these themes are approached through a sense of irony. All of my works are in some way linked by recurring formal concerns through the subject matter. The composition is of course influenced by said subject matter. Each series often consists of multiple works, often in the same range of medium, grouped around specific themes and meanings. Through research and production new areas of interest arise and lead to the next body of work.

I am a storyteller whose practice is peppered with a bit of mystery. The idea of discovery through pictures, is what drives my endless desire to create.

I use my practice to examine history and current events, whose subject matter is sometimes based upon social inequalities. My primary focus is to reveal the beauty of a people where it’s not normally celebrated; to juxtapose imagery that is uplifting against that which is not.

The work is predominantly figurative. In the past I’ve used motion picture, still photography, writing and painting to articulate my ideas and concepts. Imagine, if you will, that my compositions are a single frame out of the 24 it takes to produce one second of motion picture.

I enjoy pushing the envelope on topics that I feel should constantly be investigated, improved upon or eradicated, such as racism, sexism and religion.

In 2005 I spent a month abroad in Austria studying a painting technique that I now use in my work called the Mischtechnik. The Mischtechnik is the mixed application of egg tempera and oil glazes. The technique lends itself to my meticulous nature.

The tempera enables me with the ability to render the cartoon in great detail. The oil paint, of course, provides me with the buttery lushness that comes with the medium. The mixture of the two effects the painting in such a way that uniquely sets itself apart from the traditional oil painting or egg tempera picture.

Imagine the whitest white or the warmth of the Sun, serving as the glue that binds the underpainting together. Then imagine adding green or blue; the feeling of a cool breeze against a freshly cut lawn. You take these things and envelope them in a story, then you allow your audience to receive it however it comes.

Host or Publisher 21c Museum Hotel