Quantum Digital Art Season 1 Artist Interview: Arclight
We had the pleasure to sit down with Arclight to discuss his new collection "LIMINAL SPACE," his life story and inspiration
Adesola Yusuf (Arclight) is a 25-year-old multimedia artist inspired by Renaissance, Baroque, and Rococo art movements, as much as from Pop and Internet Art. He creates collages that blur the line between digital illustration and photography.
In LIMINAL SPACE, manipulated self-portraits and photographs of his brother take center stage in a series of digital paintings depicting the two young men involved in mundane activities. The surreal treatment of these banal scenes inject a palpable feeling of nostalgia.
Quantum: Who are your biggest influences?
Arclight: My biggest artistic influence wouldn’t be a person, my biggest influence would be the internet, most especially Pinterest, why? it is such an interesting app for art & fashion the ability to pin almost anything from across the web makes it like a very large catalog of interests that you can use in creating your own customized lookbook that caters to your own aesthetic, because of the amount of art I go through it’s physically impossible to know which artist would be my biggest influence.
Quantum: Can you describe your creative process for us?
Arclight: The process is just like the process I often use, I first understand what I’m trying to journal, is it a story or how I feel, in this case, it was both but more of the latter, after that, I get my phone and start taking pictures with different poses that communicates the feeling I’m trying invoke then move on to photoshop where most of the works happen I draw and apply other images to create collages, while working on my laptop I had Pinterest opened on my iPad and was scrolling through as I work to stimulate my mind, also to avoid me getting on my phone, sometimes I watch movies as I work.
Quantum: Precisely what is it you want to say with this collection, and how do you get your artwork to say that?
Arclight: I’m trying to understand the feeling of being in a liminal space its a familiar feeling, I’ve been here before and this project is just me thinking out loud, being in this space is like sitting in the waiting room of a firm waiting to be called in for an interview but you’ve been there since 7:00 am and it’s already 4:00 pm while the TV in the waiting room plays Fela giving you a nostalgic feeling mixed with the uncertainty of the future. The thing is with everything happening in my environment and community at large we are all in a transitional period and it has snowballed into me thinking that in itself is a liminal space of some sort a transition maybe to somewhere transcendent.
Quantum: Is there a piece that embodies the overall collection and can you share the story behind it?
Arclight: That’d be 4 and 8. 4 was taken at a turning point in my life I was at a friend’s birthday I was supposed to be enjoying myself but I had just received a call that made my tummy churn, things were looking up for me personally while I stood and stared at the body of water I was thinking of how I can help the people around me without it affecting my own mental wellbeing, I’m proud to say I failed successfully at doing that; if this state isn’t looking up helping people is almost like pouring water in a basket. I wonder when all this would end or would if, is this just a transitional period or a destination. 8 was clearly a transitional period it was a year after I graduated from school and I was still living in the space I did while I was a student along with my friend I was experimenting a lot with fashion while dealing with anxiety induced by being a graduate thinking what is next, I set my phone’s camera on timer and took a picture of me wearing a Tshirt I just dyed and painted on, one day I might be able to sell some of these merchandises I thought to myself or maybe make them in better quality for myself.
Quantum: How did you first encounter NFTs and Cryptoart, and when did it click for you that there was a lot of potential here?
Arclight: around October/ November 2020 I officially got in the space may 2021 thanks to two of my early collectors Pule Taukobong and Numomo creative agency, I figured there was potential here the first time I minted my piece I saw it as a home and a place to immortalise my digital pieces and again when I came across Linda and was invited into cyber baat which started as an exhibition I was able to connect with people like me at a time when people of my descent were sparse in the space.