Ifesinachi Comedy Nwanyanwu

Ifesinachi Comedy Nwanyanwu (born 2 June 1975) is a Nigerian Visual artist, playwright, poet and environmental activist. He was born in Nsukka, Nigeria. Quotes “For me as an environmental artist, one of the key things I do is to use waste as material to create art, like this backdrop you see here, so that people can begin to have alternative views about waste. Someone’s waste is another’s treasure,” “Coming to the city, I have always felt the absence of the greenery. And being an artist I have always explored the materials I can work it and I think of what I can do with plastic bottles or this and that. And the more I do this, the more curious I become and I have been doing this for the last 16 years,” “I had always been creative as a child but I always wanted to study medicine. But when I was in the University studying Crop Production, I started doing portraits for students and realized how much I could make from it. And people started asking what I was doing studying Crop Production. When I left [the university], I felt I didn’t have to look for an office job, because I was self-taught. I moved to Lagos that has a vibrant arts community and then later to Abuja in 2001. I haven’t looked back since then.” “It gives me satisfaction. The one thing about this is the fulfillment because unlike regular art, people need to connect with the art and the material because they need to connect to buying discarded sacks for instance that have been taken and made into art. But beyond the commercial value, the projects we do, such as this ‘One Environment,’ help us to appreciate the value and impact of the work we are doing.” “We’ve called it ‘One Environment’ because the world is one and it is built on the template of everyone joining hands to make a difference,” “The waste is always there. Some of them are what I generate in my own house and some of them are generated by others and I pick them from the street or the refuse dump, because I go there often. The ones I have to buy, I buy them for next to nothing. But the process of converting them from trash to art is the challenge. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure,”