Stephanie Okereke Linus

Portrait of Nollywood Director, Producer, Actress Stephanie Okereke. Stephanie Linus is a Nigerian actress, film director and model. She has received several awards and nominations for her work as an actress, including the 2003 Reel Award for Best Actress, the 2006 AfroHollywood Award for Best Actress, and three nominations for Best Actress in a Leading Role at the Africa Movie Academy Awards in 2005, 2009 and 2010

The portrait was part of the exhibition ‘Nollywood Portraits: A Radical Beauty, which’ was curated by the African Artists Foundation and exhibited at Alliance Francaise in Lagos, Nigeria. 
The exhibition featured works by Nigerian-born, New York based photographer Ike Ude. It was Ike Ude first solo exhibition in his native country Nigeria, offering a substantial presentation of his portraits of members of Nigeria's vibrant movie scene. Nollywood is a 3-billion-dollar industry and the second largest film industry in the world.

Ike Ude orchestrates a dramatic cinematic atmosphere of light and colour, whereby the industry's illustrious veterans, in company with the next generation of emerging talent pose in classically staged shots. Pictorial representations include personalities such as actress Genevieve Nnaji, director Stephanie Okereke Linus and filmmaker Kunle Afolayan. The thematic thread that intertwines this body of work, culminates in the centrepiece of the collection titled 'The School of Nollywood'. The title is both play on, and departure from the artistic opulence of one of Raphael Sanzio Urbino's notable fresco, The School ef Athens (1509). The painting is of a grandiose architectural framework, depicting prominent philosophers of Greek antiquity, posed in a manner whereby they dominate but do not crowd their environment.
With these works of portraiture, Ude complements the discourse on the representation of Africans in cinema, from colonial domination and inferior stereotypes to one of intellect and creative agency in telling our own stories.