We (2024) portrays a smiling man surrounded by pink flowers and blue foliage that mimics the pattern of his bright shirt. Deep green paint strokes evoke a lush, verdant background, populated with a cast of anonymous figures, often found in Omuku’s paintings. We was inspired by the connections Omuku forged among the cohort of artists whom she met during her residency at Civitella Ranieri in Italy in 2024. Especially struck by a poet’s use of the pronoun “we” to invoke the ancestors who surround him, Omuku introduces this collective outlook to her own art. For the first time in Omuku’s practice, the anonymous figures in the background come to embody a set of ancestors offering protection to the painting’s central subject.