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Mikael Chukwuma Owunna is an American photographer who lives and works in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Owunna is queer. While struggling to come to terms with his sexuality, he discovered photography, which became both a creative outlet and an escape.Amber Hickey and Anney Traymany, "Mikael Owunna's Photographs Show the Essence of Black Healing". , Aperture, June 4, 2020. He has mentioned Octavia Butler and Chinua Achebe as influences on his work. He cites an exhibit of the work of Zanele Muholi as "the first time I had ever seen an image of another queer African person," and as part of the impetus for his first project, Limitless Africans.Jake Naughton, "Pride and Self-Love in the L.G.B.T.Q. African Diaspora" , The New York Times, March 19, 2018.
In 2013 Owunna began work on Limitless Africans.Isabella Gomez Sarmiento, "'Un-African'? Photos Challenge Notions Of LGBTQ Identity In The African Diaspora", WESA, November 2, 2019. The book took six and a half years to create, during which Owunna traveled to ten countries across North America, Europe and the Caribbean to document the experiences of LGBTQ African immigrants and refugees. "Growing up, I was told that it was 'un-African' to be gay and that homosexuality was foreign to our culture. After enduring years of severe alienation from my Nigerian heritage and a series of in Nigeria, I started Limitless to reclaim my African-ness and queerness on my own terms." "Queer continent: Mikael Owunna's Limitless Africans – in pictures" , The Guardian, November 12, 2019. The New York Times described the book as "defiant and arresting, challenging notions of what queer people look like, what African people look like and the grace that comes from loving oneself."
His project Infinite Essence grew out of frustration with the constant media images of Black bodies as sites of violence and death. "What is the impact that has when you see somebody who looks like you being killed all of the time?" The project's goal is "to counteract the pain of those photos, to create imagery that shows the black body not as a site of death but as a site of magic." In February 2019 he received a $20,000 grant from the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council to complete the project. "Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council Announces Lift Grant Awardees" , Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council, February 13, 2019.
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