The Chaotic Elegance of Raw Unfiltered Charcoal Drawings: Unwana Efiong
Written by Oyedele Alokan
Unwana Efiong, a Nigerian-born, UK-based artist, approaches her craft with a raw, unfiltered intensity that sets her apart. She calls herself an expressionist, though her portfolio defies easy categorization—moving fluidly between pen-on-paper sketches, acrylics and oils on canvas works. It’s in her charcoal sketches, however, that her vision crystallizes, her strokes wielding the power to unsettle, provoke, and resonate. Unwana’s monochromatic explorations are studies in duality—light and shadow, control and chaos, the seen and the felt. Take “Unease”, where a woman claws at her scalp, her eyes wide with distress. The drawing feels unrestrained, almost feral; its cyclical scrawls, untamed by outline or symmetry, conjure the disorientation of schizophrenia or the spiral of mental illness. The result is neither decorative nor comforting but viscerally human—a depiction of inner turmoil that bypasses logic to hit the gut.
Contrast this with “Twilight”, a portrait of a young girl holding orange slices to her eyes, her tongue defiantly sticking out. Here, Unwana’s scrawled technique takes on a jubilant quality, capturing the boundless energy and rebellion of adolescence. The strokes that in “Unease” evoked madness, in this particular piece suggests the effervescent chaos of possibility—a reminder that the same tools can tell vastly different stories. Her thematic range expands further in “Beyond Imagination”, a meditation on the emotional architecture of masculinity. The piece portrays a man whose calm exterior belies a tempest beneath, sketched in faint, jagged outlines that frame his body. It’s a quiet, devastating commentary on the expectation that men endure their anger, their pain, their everything, in silence.
Perhaps Unwana’s most enigmatic work, “A Tribute to Hope”, is a fragmented silhouette of a man whose face and hands are etched with smaller, disconnected figures. The lack of cohesion, both in form and meaning, feels deliberate—as though Unwana is sketching not the resolution of a narrative but the process of grappling with it. There’s a therapeutic quality here, an artist carving space for her own emotions while allowing viewers to project their own. Though Unwana works across media, there’s a singularity to her charcoal sketches. They are raw and unrelenting, a mirror to the complexities of the human psyche. Her works have been exhibited at venues like Madeke Gallery and The Holy Art Gallery, where their intensity draws audiences like moths to a flame. Unwana doesn’t simply capture the world as it is—she reflects it back, darker and deeper, daring us to look.
