NEW YORK, NY.- Kasmin has welcomed Nengi Omuku (b. 1987, Warri, Nigeria) to the gallery. The artist’s first New York solo exhibition will go on view at our 509 West 27th Street location in September 2024. Using the subject of the body to translate interior experience, Omuku’s expressive paintings portray abstracted figures among spectacular, celestial landscapes that draw evocatively from the natural world, horticulture, and creationism.
"Omuku creates the impression of beautiful figuration distilled from some ethereal miasma of dreams." –John Vincler, The New York Times.
Omuku’s distinctive, multifaceted process culminates in the application of oil paint in richly-textured brushstrokes to gesso-prepared composite strips of the Nigerian fabric sanyan. A tightly-woven, hand-spun material, sanyan is one of several forms of textile that have shaped Nigeria’s cultural history. 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. Now based in Lagos, Nigeria, Omuku spent many years in London while studying at the Slade School of Fine Art, where oil painting remained central to the established canon.
Omuku's first presentation with Kasmin was marked with her inclusion in Dissolving Realms, curated by Katy Hessel, in 2022. In 2023–24 she will be included in Aso oke: Prestige Cloth from Nigeria at the Saint Louis Art Museum in Missouri. She was recently awarded the Civitella Ranieri Residency in Italy (2024), following a 2022–23 residency at Black Rock Senegal. Omuku has also earned numerous scholarships and awards, including the British Council CHOGM art award presented by HM Queen Elizabeth II. In 2021, she received a World Trade Organization Residency organized by African Art Foundation in Geneva. Her work can be found in international public and private collections including the Baltimore Museum of Art, the ICA Miami, the HSBC Art Collection, and the Loewe Art Collection, among others. The artist continues to be represented by Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery and Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London.
Using the subject of the body to translate interior experience, Nengi Omuku’s expressive paintings portray abstracted figures among spectacular, celestial landscapes that draw evocatively from the natural world, horticulture, and creationism. Born in Warri, Nigeria, Omuku spent many years in London while studying at the Slade School of Fine Art, where oil painting remained central to the established canon. Her distinctive, multifaceted process culminates in the application of oil paint in richly-textured brushstrokes to gesso-prepared composite strips of the Nigerian fabric sanyan. A tightly-woven, hand-spun material, sanyan is one of several forms of textile that have shaped Nigeria’s cultural history.
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.
Omuku lives and works in Lagos, Nigeria. In 2022, she was included in Dissolving Realms, curated by Katy Hessel, marking her first presentation with Kasmin; her inaugural New York solo exhibition will be staged at Kasmin in September 2024. In 2023–24 she will be included in Aso oke: Prestige Cloth from Nigeria at the Saint Louis Art Museum in Missouri, and in 2023 she was included in Rites of Passage, curated by Péjú Oshin at Gagosian, Britannia Street, London. In 2022, she staged the solo exhibition Parables of Joy at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery in London, and in 2023–24, she will mount a solo exhibition at Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery in Palm Beach, Florida; she has previously staged solo exhibitions at the gallery's locations in Berlin (2021) and London (2020). Her work was presented as part of the Bangkok Art Biennale in 2022–23, coinciding with the debut of her first-ever installation, a monumental work at Art Basel Miami Beach 2022. In 2023, she was awarded the Civitella Ranieri Residency in Italy (2024) to follow a 2022–23 residency at Black Rock Senegal. Omuku has also 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's work can be found in international public and private collections including the Baltimore Museum of Art, the ICA Miami, the HSBC Art Collection, and the Loewe Art Collection, among others.
