The Name
Terracotta is an Italian word which means baked earth. The word is derived from the Latin terra cocta meaning cooked earth. It is a multifunctional art form ranging from pottery to statues and roof tiles.
Nok Terracotta was the first ancient art form that was accessible to me and my fellow classmates while attending high school in Nigeria. We inspected them during museum visits and made replicas during practice time.
Learning about terracotta was the first time that I began to conceive of a world where everyone shares a common ground. From Mesoamerica to Eurasia, we can find tools and artwork made using terracotta. Terracotta as well as ceramic artworks can serve multiple functions in one creation like this Terracotta lekythos (oil flask) that is decorated with images of the myth of the war between the amazons and the Greeks. 
ca. 420 B.C. Greek, Attic, Classical. Terracotta; red-figure, white-ground, H. 19 1/2 in. (49.5 cm), D. 8 in. (20.5 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Rogers Fund, 1931 (31.11.13)
The Inspiration
Logic demands compassion and compassion breeds class consciousness
Growing up, I was often put on a pedestal by adults in my community as an icon of sainthood. It felt absolutely embarrassing because I knew that I was nothing of the sort; I had simply discovered that life is easier to live, if we engage in as little vice as possible. It was even more laughable as my parents and teachers used my success as an evidence of their expertise when the reality was that I succeeded despite their incompetence but I digress.
As I got older, I began to observe the thorough threads of black and white thinking overtaking global history since the age of discovery. We currently approach morality like a fixed set of rules that we must adhere to without flaws and with no space for grey. Thus breeding a culture of intense shame and guilt paired with a lack of hope in our personal and collective redemption.
However, what is often left unsaid is that acts of kindness, compassion and self-growth are not just moral, they are logical as well. While human civilization is believed to have begun with the invention of agriculture, human collaboration -and conflict- is one of the most significant drivers of human progress.
Since the start of civilization, human beings have thrived as a species by intertwining the fate of the individual with the fate of the collective. Collaboration saves lives, ensures individual success and drives innovation. We have survived for centuries by working together, collaboration is hardwired into our DNA. Therefore, no one and nothing on earth exists in a vacuum, we touch others as much as they touch us. Logic calls us to remember our origins and our place; it calls us to preserve our lives by protecting ourselves, the world and those around us. Logic compels us to adopt the ideologies of class consciousness and class solidarity.
Unfortunately, this wisdom seems to cycle in and out of the collective consciousness. When you pair that with the human affinity for hierarchies, simple rhetoric, herd mentality -and a slurry of other factors- mankind’s zigzagging between periods of stability, high social mobility and peace to periods of instability, high social inequality and war start to make sense.
The Goal
Establishing a media house for works that inspire class consciousness.
Artists, historians, academics, philosophers, and scientists occupy the valued roles of preserving and proclaiming our sacred epistemologies. As an artist, I want to create, curate and nurture art and media that promote a sense of class consciousness and class solidarity in a way that is accessible to the ordinary person.
The stress of modern day life is designed to make brain rot and reduced cognitive function the most preferred way of relaxation. The conspiratorial “they” want our minds to be shut down from stress so often that we can’t sense the world beyond our immediate surroundings; more importantly, so that we more easily buy into the belief that personal success is separate from collective success and must be attained at all costs. With Terracotta, I want to touch my surroundings by waking people up with exciting and provocative stories similar to time honored works such as “Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe, “Not My Business” by Niyi Osundare, “The Man Died: Prison Notes of Wole Soyinka”, “1984” and “Animal Farm” by George Orwell and “Frankenstein; or the Modern Prometheus” by Mary Shelley.
The Inside Scoop
Currently, our media house has a population of two workmates. We are both black, disabled and queer and we are developing stories that will eventually become a comic series, the first of which is the Ulster Invasion Arc.
The Ulster Invasion Arc will discuss class struggle, colonialism, misogyny, xenophobia, filial love, youthful resistance and many more yummy topics. We’re interested in hearing what characters, scenes and dialogues have been the most interesting in the story so far.
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