Artists we spotlighted this year on Omenai Insider (II)

In our bi-weekly newsletter, Omenai Insider, we focused on artists who caught our attention. Our focus was on artists of African origin living on the continent and in the diaspora. The artists, both emerging and established, on this list were chosen based on their practice and the impact that they had this year through awards, exhibitions, auctions, and art fairs. Working across different mediums, these artists are consumed with an urgent need for documentation, experimentation, and artistic expression. These are artists you should know. 

1. Simphiwe Mbunyuza

Simphiwe Mbunyuza (b. 1989) creates masterful objects and vessels combining stoneware, leather, fabric, and steel. Drawing from traditional ceremonies, physical typographies, and legacies of the Xhosa people from the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa, Mbunyuza creates large-scale figural sculptures and objects. Using a coiling technique employed by the Xhosa people for centuries, his works document and honour the rituals and land associated with his native people. Recent group exhibitions include ArtNow, Oklahoma Contemporary, Oklahoma City (2021); Small Objects, A.I.R. Vallauris, France (2017); Franschhoek Annual Festival, Art in the Yard Gallery, Franschhoek, South Africa (2016); among many others. 

2. Peter Uka

Peter Uka (b. 1975) devises figurative paintings which draw from his childhood memories of Nigeria. With classical training in realistic figuration, Uka combines various image references of time-specific objects with images from his memory to convey innate and timeless human emotion. Scenes of growing up in Nigeria, including elements like afro hairstyles and bell-bottom jeans, bright mannerisms, and local customs are captured in vibrant, visual narrative.  His compositions also capture international trends from the late 20th century and the ways globalization connects countries around the world. These narratives uncover historical precedents of globalization and dynamic cultural signifiers connecting two countries that Uka calls home, while reminding the rest of the world of collective reciprocity, closeness, and connection.  Uka completed his studies at the Kunstakademiein Düsseldorf, and has exhibited at the National Museum Onikan (Lagos, Nigeria), among others. He lives and works in Cologne, Germany.

3. Falida Nkomo

Falida Nkomo is a Malawian-South African artist making sense of self and identity through her practice. Migration is a starting point within her work. As a second-generation immigrant born and raised in South Africa, her work is rooted in the concept of belonging in the sense of fitting in through identity, which is closely linked to an individual experience. Her printmaking technique utilizes layered monotypes and historical imagery, weaving a visual tapestry that explores themes of belonging, and the struggles of navigating foreign borders. Using her mother’s memory as a channel to engage with her Malawian heritage, her work expresses how this sense of hybridity through culture influences the idea of shared identities and what it means to belong within the ideas of what home is. Nkomo’s expressions seek to become a language of how one traverses through borders despite their foreignness.

4. Collins Obijiaku

Collins Obijiaku (b. 1995) was born in Kaduna, Nigeria. His elegant portraits of Black men and women gaze directly at the viewer. The artist uses various materials, often mixing oil, acrylic, and charcoal to achieve soft gradients, seductive texture, and beguiling linework; seen up close, the arrangements of his brushstrokes are almost cartographical in appearance. His subjects are both people close to him and strangers he meets on the street, which allows Obijiaku to create intimate records of his home and surrounding community. For his second solo exhibition with Roberts Projects, Obijiaku will be presenting a new series of portraits inspired by his first encounter with the Atlantic Ocean. These five works on paper feature core elements of the artist’s signature style—quarter-length portraits with unbroken eye contact and a shallow depth of field—against gestural renderings of the ocean at different times of day.

5. Ofunne Azinge

Ofunne Azinge (b.1998) is a contemporary Nigerian-British painter based in London. Her work primarily focuses on the history of post-colonialism in Nigeria and its effects on black men across the diaspora and black masculinity in painting. Azinge’s work draws from various aspects of her life including the socio-political effects of migration, nostalgia and the complexities of her upbringing. Her large-scale paintings combine the use of her unique image transfer method, with the figures painted in a mixture of black/blue/purple hues, compilations of symbols from various generations. Her work is in the permanent collection of The Perry Art Collection, USA. Azinge was awarded The Arts Club Award, the Royal Academy of Arts, in 2021.

6. Ojooluwatide Ojo

Born in Lagos, Nigeria, Ojooluwatide Ojo‘s practice developed out of experimental photography, which she interprets as paintings. Employing a blend of acrylic, thread, and photographic elements, she creates new narratives that merge past and current realities, while offering viewers a window into the complexities of societal dynamics. Ojo explores themes of societal empathy and spiritual expression within intimate experiences, while incorporating threads to establish tangible connections to the histories she references. Her ongoing series, ‘The Home We Grew Up In’, represents and amplifies the intricacy of our societal existence, through an in-depth look on family, politics, fashion and tradition in Nigeria.

7. Xanthe Somers

Xanthe Somers (b. 1992) is a Zimbabwean ceramicist based in London. Her work offers a critical reading of extraction economies and notions of domesticity within postcolonial contexts, with a focus on her birth country. Her sculptures, which are traditionally hand-coiled, have their surfaces punctured, woven, or adorned with meticulously shaped and painted details. There is a playfulness to her work that blends political commentary and hyper-ornamentation to draw attention to overconsumption, women’s work, cheap labour, and the impact of eco-racist practices on the Global South. Xanthe’s art can be seen in numerous private and public collections, including the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. Xanthe’s work has appeared in various publications, including The Times, The Telegraph, The Guardian, Ceramic Review, House and Garden UK, and Elle Decoration UK.

8. Aisha Seriki

Aisha Olamide Seriki (b. 1998) is a Nigerian, London-based multimedia artist specialising in fine art, photography and sculpture. Seriki works from a canon of personal histories. Her practice is holistic and embodied, subverting formal photographic traditions. Cosmological systems such as the Yoruba Spiritual Tradition have informed the multisensory approach Seriki has to documentation, communication and creation. Through optics and trickery, she challenges the rigid imagination of self, creating space in the archive for a wider definition. Grounded by the principles of Ìṣẹ̀ṣe (Yorùbá Spiritual Tradition), her work uses photo-manipulation techniques to explore the relationships between photography and the self.

9. Ozoemena Nzubechukwu

Ozoemena Nzubechukwu (b. 1999) is a visual artist working from Benin, Nigeria. Influenced by familial patterns, history and lived experiences, the interpretation of his work aims to isolate the viewer in a reflective space that allows for introspection and retrospection whilst taking cognizance of present realities. He is inspired by artists like Jennifer Packer, Austin Uzor, and Kudzanai-Violet Hwami. With a mildly textured layout of paint and roughly scribbled text, he tries to pull the viewer into the complexities and similarities of regular human life, activities and interactions leaving the viewer nostalgic, wanting more. 

Read and subscribe to the Omenai Insider to catch the latest African art news and artists’ spotlights.