It is with great pleasure that the PAS blogsite will begin sharing poet, filmmaker, and journalist Wana Udobang’s video series Culture Diaries. Udobang’s series features African artists across mediums – film, text, fashion, music – discussing their process, inspiration, challenges, and personal stories. She describes her series as an “artist archive,” and through these conversations she creates not just a collection of artist profiles but preserves a particular moment in an artist’s journey. By sharing these videos to YouTube, rather than locking them in an institutional vault, she makes the conversation easily accessible to anyone with curiosity and access to the internet. With many artists represented and added on a regular basis, one can keep returning to the Culture Diaries to be invigorated and inspired and to be in conversation with oneself about the people and ideas that move us. That said, browse the Culture Diaries series at your own pace or keep returning to our blogsite as we revisit the Culture Diaries and highlight an artist from the archive each week.
Wana Udobang by Kamnelechukwu Obasi
An accomplished artist and writer, Wana Udobang’s work has appeared in places like Brittle Paper, Al Jazeera, The Guardian, BellaNaija, and the BBC, and you can find her poetry and fiction published across a variety of mediums including in her own short films and albums. Visit her website WanaWana.net or YouTube channel to see her latest work and follow her on social media on Twitter @MissWanaWana and Instagram @mswanawana.
To kick off this partnership with PAS, Wana joined author and poet (and director of PAS) Chris Abani for an informal chat about her Culture Diaries as well as her own artistic process. Watch the video below to hear them discuss navigating the patriarchy, kitchen alchemy, her short film Nylon, breaking taboo, the artist’s need to connect, and more.