Name: 黒人の歴史をモチーフに、黒いレゴで傑作を生み出す職人 | Obsessed | WIRED Japan
Uploaded: 2025-04-11T08:46:16.000Z
Duration: 10 min 13 s
Description: VoiceTubeの動画で発音を聞きながら英語表現を覚えよう！学べる英語：

Meet Eko Nomako, a Ghanaian-Canadian artist making breathtaking art out of black Lego bricks.

My entire life, I've probably clicked hundreds of thousands of parts, probably millions.

And Lego actually is an abbreviated form of Leggoet, which is Danish for play well.

Eko's jaw-dropping sculptures are exhibited in galleries, but they began in DIY studios at his home.

Welcome to Studio A, the first of my three studio rooms.

This is where I build most of my building black mythos artworks.

Really an exploration of black African mythology.

This one, I'm actually not sure what this sculpture is going to be.

I know that she will have these kind of cornrows going on.

This tubing was not made to be hair, but when I look at parts now, I just see different parts of anatomy that just speak out to me.

This artwork so far, I think I've clocked in almost 100 hours.

Some artworks could take up to 1,000 hours.

While some of Eko's larger pieces can take 1,000 hours, he could prototype a new, smaller design from scratch in just a day.

It's where I'm going to be building my series, Building Black Amorphia, Spiritual Starships.

So I'm going to build a spiritual starship today.

The idea behind it is that we take inspiration from science fiction, but at the same time it's very important for me to centralize black characters, black stories, black history within that context.

So I'll be taking the form of a T-47 air speeder and turning it into an ancestral vessel.

Once the spine is completed, I'll look at some reference photos of the ship and then start constructing the wing shape.

Dropping Lego is actually the most annoying thing.

People think that stepping on Lego is like the most annoying thing, but to me, the most annoying thing is spilling them outright, just knocking a container over and it just spills everywhere.

Like the rage that fills up when I'm just like trying to get something done and then shit just scatters.

While dropping pieces is a frustration, Eko still needs to keep a massive amount of parts on hand to actualize his sculptures.

Each of my studios has a section that is dedicated to the parts.

It has a stud or a notch right in the center and opposed to a piece like this, which would naturally have two studs on it.

Over here, I've got various different tires.

The Lego group actually produces the most tires in the world.

More than Goodyear, more than Michelin, because their tires are actually made of rubber, so they're classified as actual tires.

What this hinge joint allowed is for me to put these fairings anywhere I want.

I like to cover all the notches and studs on my work.

Triangle tile allows you to get some great geometric patterns when you put them all together.

The beauty of inverted parts is that they click from the bottom up.

Now, I do want to find like a discontinued part like this.

It's one of those pieces that I would have to even second guess if I saw it sitting down there and wonder if it actually is a Lego element.

I think I only have one of these in my entire collection and I've got like millions of parts.

The most common reaction when I tell people what I do is usually excitement.

There's this kind of, oh my God, you get to do what you love.

A metric of if you love what you do is when people say, if you won the lottery, would you still do what you do?

I would just get a bigger studio, more staff and build bigger things.

Kadisa is a dragon cat and dragon cats are creatures that I came up with.

I've always been fascinated with avian creatures.

I took some inspiration from the griffin and made this feline cat with wings.

These lengthy builds are not just reflective of Echo's artistic talent, but also a lifetime love of Lego.

I started building with Lego when I was about three or four years old.

I started off inheriting Lego from my older brother.

It just had this appeal to me because you can create the things you don't have.

If I see something that I wanted, then I would be able to satisfy that urge by going to my Lego collection and building something that would just placate me.

So when I first started building, it was purely for fun.

Eventually, it got elevated to an art form.

In 2007, though, is when I had this resurgence of interest in building and I just realized how fun it was again and it just kind of stayed with me a little bit closer from that point.

And then by 2012, 2013, I was really trying to make my mark as an artist and the two things just kind of came together.

This artwork is very special to me because I've had this artwork since I began my career.

I created this artwork when she was about the size of a six-year-old.

What I most enjoy about this artwork is the hair.

And when you have so much volume of hair, there's just like a gravity to it.

And when it comes to Black people, our hair is political.

For all the people that are going to see this work and be inspired by it, to have their identity reinforced from a material that historically underrepresented them, it means a lot.

So making the formal outlines and the shape of a mask is like the first step.

And then once the shape is laid out, then all the fun stuff really starts happening where you get to like start giving it some kind of personality.

It can be grueling work sometimes and, you know, my joints have suffered from building.

But all the pain is worth it for Echo to make these textured works of art.

Kweku Anansi is an Akan deity, a trickster god.

My favorite feature, I really like the crown.

The main center part of the crown is a combination of two different parts and they're both discontinued if I'm not mistaken.

I always think it's really fascinating when I'm able to use discontinued parts because there's something more rare about it.

There's only so many of them left on the world.

Nancy took me, I'd say about 300 hours plus over like a long period of time.

So start thinking about the eyes when it comes to expression.

Yeah, there's something about the personality that can be found in our eyes.

字幕リスト動画再生

黒人の歴史をモチーフに、黒いレゴで傑作を生み出す職人 | Obsessed | WIRED Japan

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