Nengi Omuku b. 1987

Omuku’s impressionistic landscapes and distinctive, rich color palettes provide enveloping spaces for the artist’s loosely rendered individual and group portraits. Blending interior and exterior, figure and ground, Omuku explores themes of refuge and stillness interwoven with personal narratives drawn from her recent experiences in Lagos, London, New York, and in residence at Civitella Ranieri, Italy. With works suspended from the ceiling, the installation activates the gallery architecture while offering viewers a space of reprieve from the motions of daily life.

Omuku's unique practice, which involves active research into and custodianship of the production of sanyan, interlaces traditions that honor both the artist's West African heritage as well as her personal history. A recurring subject in her work is the social group-families and communities whose ambiguous presence suggests a contradiction. While we desire to gather and belong, we may also experience a sense of dislocation from our identity or society. The artist's interest in bringing forth such unspoken social and psychological realities speaks both to the stories of her subjects-who she has often photographed and painted in her studio-and to her reflections on rising civil unrest in Lagos, where political tensions have developed intergenerationally since the British colonization of Nigeria in 1884. Increasingly, Omuku's use of the figure is drawn from sources in archival and contemporary media, further positioning the body as a site of triangulation for societal issues.

Omuku's landscapes, however, are those of the mind. Romantic and impressionistic, with distinctive palettes that demonstrate her profound sensitivity to color, they meld mesmerizing perspectival shifts with instinctive brushwork that appears to raise the image from the painting's surface. The act of becoming-of bringing into being-reappears as a subject in the work through references to creationism, baptism, and ritual, while the paintings themselves are testaments to the imaginative power of belief, reverie, and empathy. Omuku's spiritual and philosophical contemplations are the wellspring from which these images emerge.

Omuku increasingly perceives her practice as a conversation with her medium. Through her heavily-researched use of sanyan, she explores its historical significance, touching on themes of gender and domesticity, national and ceremonial dress, and the endurance of indigenous culture in the face of colonial rule. Increasingly, her paintings' subjects are depicted in patterned garments, with drapery used as a framing device. A recent body of work features cotton-spinners in Senegal in the process of producing the textiles.

For all their splendor, the artist's rich visions are tinged with pathos. Omuku's desire for an experience of her pre-colonial homeland is entwined with their material, just as the producers of sanyan would traditionally include prayers in the form of symbolic markings in the fabric's weave. Informed by a commitment to honor this past, Omuku's sensational visions constitute an embodiment of our eternal present.

Museum exhibitions & collections

Omuku was selected to join the inaugural Artist Council of the Museum of West African Art, Benin City in 2025. She has earned numerous scholarships and awards, including the British Council CHOGM art award presented by HM Queen Elizabeth II. Commissions include a 2018 mural in an intensive care psychiatric ward at the Maudsley Hospital, London, from the Arts Council England. In 2021, she received a World Trade Organization Residency organized by African Art Foundation in Geneva.

Omuku lives and works between Lagos, Nigeria and London, United Kingdom.She has staged solo exhibitions at Kasmin, New York (2024); Hastings Contemporary, Hastings, UK and Arnolfini, Bristol, UK (2023-24), among other venues. She has participated in group exhibitions at the ICA San Francisco (2024), Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz, Austria (2024), DAK'ART, Biennale of Contemporary African Art, Dakar, Senegal (2024), Dulwar Picture Gallery, London (2024), Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, UK (2023-24), Saint Louis Art Museum, Saint Louis, MO (2023), and Bangkok Art Biennale (2022-23). In 2023, she was awarded the Civitella Ranieri Residency in Italy (2024) to follow a 2022-23 residency at Black Rock Senegal. Omuku's work can be found in international public and private collections including the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Newark Museum of Art, the ICA Miami, the HSBC Art Collection, and the Loewe Art Collection, among others.