Ayzay Ukwuoma is an American contemporary artist whose practice is guided by an interest in how meaning survives within systems. His work develops through sustained engagement with public and institutional modes of circulation, using mark-making and writing as connective forms. Drawing on conceptual frameworks from information systems, he works across text, painting, installation, performance, and digital media. He frequently employs coded and rule-based languages—binary, telegraphic, procedural—as organizing structures within his practice. His work is attentive to the impact of the POST-MODEM condition, examining how ideas circulate, persist, and remain legible as they move through mediated environments.
BIO
Ayzay Ukwuoma was born in Los Angeles to an African father and a Creole mother. His early engagement with language and writing developed through the creation of public-facing non-commissioned artworks. Before fully committing to an art practice, Ukwuoma worked as a digital ink-and-paint artist in a Korean-owned animation studio during the industry’s transition from hand-painted cels to digital production, and later as a network interface designer at a major telecommunications company, where he co-designed internet modems distributed across the United States. In the early 2010s, Ukwuoma initiated a series of art placements that expanded the settings in which his work could be encountered—creating large paintings and cutting them to form smaller paintings, which he placed inside books at public libraries across European cities including Berlin, Grenoble, Lyon, Marseille, Paris, and Valencia. This approach to expanding the sites of encounter continues to inform his ongoing work, including recent projects developed in São Paulo.