Nengi Omuku

Nengi Omuku is a Nigerian artist who completed her BA and MA at the Slade School of Fine
Art, University College London. She has had solo and group exhibitions in the UK, the U.S.A
and Nigeria, and now lives and works in Nigeria. Her artistic practice has won her
scholarships and awards, including the British Council CHOGM art award, presented by
HRH Queen Elisabeth II.
Her approach to painting is as a documentation of events that unfold around her; a
moment-by- moment embodiment of a non-linear narrative that is translated onto a surface.
Her work functions as a metaphor alluding to wider themes, one of which is difference:
between the sexes, as well as presumed racial differences. She asks, ‘How do we react when
we encounter one another?’ Fear or understand, beckon or flee.
Her work shows colored anthropomorphic forms, which stand in contrast to the scape they
inhabit. They are based on the supposition that the human figure can be transformed from
its present reality; that things can look and be otherwise. It is her desire to convey, through
drawings and paintings, presences floating through active spaces, presences that have the
aspiration of becoming events in their own right. She also questions the encounter – what
happens when different forms meet in the scape the bodies inhabit.