Ekow Nimako has taken his childhood passion and turned it into a full-time profession. Building elaborate sculptures from Lego, the Toronto-based artist makes his living working with the stuff that kids’ playroom dreams are made of. The novelty isn’t lost on him.
“As a kid, I’d watch cartoons in front of the TV and spend hours on Lego projects,” says Nimako. “Now I listen to podcasts while I work on Lego sculptures.”
Nimako says he’d use Lego to “create the things that [he] wanted but didn’t have.” Instead of following the step-by-step directions listed on the side of the Lego sets his parents bought for him, Nimako preferred to create his own designs. He’d eschew instructions and build spaceships, vehicles and all sorts of fantastical creatures from scratch.
“Lego really facilitated expression,” says the artist and father of two teenage daughters. “I mostly gravitated to it from the age of three until my early teens. And then I came back to it when I became a parent at 20 and started buying it for my own kids.”
Although Nimako’s medium has remained (mostly) constant, his message continues to evolve. His sculptures are as intricately constructed as they are politically charged.
Flower Girl (IMAGE: MICHELLE CLARK)
Building Black, Nimako’s 2014 breakout exhibition, helped him investigate what he calls the “notion of blackness” and the “cultural beauties and controversies of the black experience” through his work.
Initially hosted at the Daniels Spectrum on Dundas East, Nimako’s first curated collection included several painstakingly crafted sculptures — including the 18,000-piece Flower Girl and the 2,500-piece Smiling Doll.
Although Building Black essentially launched his Lego-centric career, Nimako’s 50,000-piece creation for Scotiabank Nuit Blanche helped bring his genius to the masses. 2015’s Silent Knight (a massive all-white Lego sculpture of a barn owl) garnered both praise and press — and kick-started a flurry of professional activity for the Montreal-born artist.
Grey Matters (IMAGE: TONI HAFKENSCHEID)
Nimako was invited to participate in Baycrest Foundation’s The Brain Project, a public exhibition of brain sculptures in Toronto intended to raise awareness for brain health.
The York University graduate also reveals that he has just signed a deal for a how-to Lego sculpture book with an American publishing house.
He’s always had an interest in writing, he says, but he never assumed his childhood passion for Lego would also facilitate his desire to become a published author.
The book, tentatively titled Beasts from Bricks, will give readers a rare glimpse into Nimako’s creative process.
“I was kind of reluctant in the beginning,” says Nimako, who spends anywhere between a dozen and 900 hours on any given project — and meticulously logs his time and work. “I’m protective of my process. But I also want my art to be accessible.”
Nimako is also making his art — and social politics — accessible through workshops he runs in conjunction with the Peel District School Board and Art Gallery of Mississauga. These workshops allow students to explore themes of race, identity and otherness through the creation of Lego avatars.
“Generally there is this real kind of wonder and excitement about what’s happening,” Nimako says. “[The kids] might initially think, ‘Oh, great — I get a break to play with Lego.’ But they also get to explore the esthetics of their legacies.”
When Nimako isn’t spending hours in his studio, teaching hands-on workshops across the GTA, plugging away at his manuscript or plotting his next project (a sequel, he says, to Building Black called Legacies that will feature “Afro-futuristic landscapes”), you’ll find him doing the only part of the job he says he doesn’t love: manually sorting through — and mentally cataloguing — an ever-growing inventory of Lego blocks.
Check out all the brains from The Brain Project — including Nimako’s — Oct. 18-31 at the launch of Yorkdale’s new luxury wing.
