Teamwork

Name: Teamwork
Brand: Raknida
Price: 55.0 USD
Availability: InStock

Anthony Ezeokoye

Pen-and-ink drawing of a rhinoceros suspended in the air by about twenty thin threads, each held by a tiny winged insect, on a pale coffee-stained background.

$55.00 – $125.00

A rhinoceros lifted by about twenty tiny insects on threads. Anth Ezeokoye's pen drawing illustrates Igwe bu ike, the Igbo idea that strength lives in unity.

Teamwork is a Studio Edition: 20 museum-quality art prints in each size, each numbered in its white border. Every artwork comes with its Cultural Passport.

The Cultural Passport

Every order comes with the heritage documented.

Digital, emailed when your order ships: the work's story, the tradition it draws on and how it was made. 5 × 7 in (13 × 18 cm), ready to print and frame beside the work.

How it works →

Anyone who has moved house with friends knows how this works. Count the insects above the rhinoceros: about twenty, each holding a thread no thicker than a hair, each adding almost nothing, and together they have lifted the heaviest animal in the picture off the ground. Anth Ezeokoye draws it in fine pen on a coffee-stained ground, so you laugh before the meaning lands: Igwe bu ike, unity is strength. Look at the rhino’s face: eyes nearly shut, legs hanging loose, carried like cargo. Anth drew it in 2020.

The culture · Igbo, southeast Nigeria. Igbo life runs on proverbs, which Chinua Achebe called “the palm-oil with which words are eaten.” Elders use them to settle disputes, teach the young and say hard things gently.

Motifs in this work

Tiny insects: the many small contributions that add up to strength

The rhinoceros: individual power and weight, lifted by others

Threads: mutual dependence, each one necessary, none enough alone

Edition: Edition of 20 in each size · 60 across all sizes. Further runs possible once a size sells out, each tagged (Run 2). Edition numbers count the works sold through Raknida; the artist may also sell their own editions of this work.
Numbering: Number, title and artist printed in the white border.
Printing: Museum-quality giclée with archival pigment inks on museum-grade cotton fine art paper.
Year: 2020
Includes: Your numbered artwork and its Cultural Passport.

Size	Sheet	Image	Museum-Quality Print only	Framed	Available
S	9 × 12 in	7½ × 10¼ in	$55	+$65	20
M	18 × 24 in	16 × 21¾ in	$85	+$119	20
L	24 × 32 in	22 × 29¾ in	$125	+$179	20

The artist

Anthony Ezeokoye

Igbo · Missouri, USA · Origin: Nigeria · 19 works on Raknida

Anthony “Anth” Ezeokoye (b. 1989) is an international award-winning digital artist, trained architect, creative director, and creative technologist. His practice sits where cultural storytelling meets emerging media. A Nigerian based in St. Louis, with professional roots across Africa’s creative industries, Anth builds visual worlds across illustration, motion, extended reality, and artificial intelligence. He treats technology not as a novelty but as a tool for authorship, access, and cultural continuity.

Across series, collections, and commissions, Anth’s work explores how heritage, identity, and narratives are constructed. He often uses contemporary African visual language to question what we inherit, how we perform, and who we choose to become.

In the A Queen & More collection, he explores the many dimensions of womanhood through 12 character archetypes in a bold, contemporary palette. Layered elements honor choice, complexity, and self-definition. In the Mask Off collection, he positions African heritage as both inheritance and future legacy. Illustration, 3D digital production, and looping animation ask what remains when performative “masks” fall away, and how cultural values can be re-authored today. His calligraphic portrait series, The Autograph, fuses typography, symbolism, and precise craftsmanship, constructing faces from names, dates, quotes, and lived histories.

Anth’s wider career extends into building creative infrastructure. He is the founder of Raknida, an art-tech platform that widens access to cultural stories by underrepresented artists. Its growing suite of products and experiences spans discovery, collection, and display. He has presented and directed creative projects across cultural, art, and design festivals and public-facing contexts. His creative direction runs through two businesses: Insecta Studios, a creative services company in Lagos, Nigeria, and Raknida Inc. in St. Louis. Recognition includes Arch Grants, SOVAS Voice Arts Awards, One Voice Awards USA, and a Future Awards Africa nomination in Arts and Culture.