NEW YORK, NY.- Kasmin announced Nengi Omuku’s (b. 1987, Nigeria) first solo exhibition in New York, titled Wild Things and Perennials. This new body of eight oil paintings, each uniquely realized on the traditional Nigerian textile sanyan, develops Omuku’s vision of painting as a constant and sustaining force in a perpetually changing world.

Omuku’s impressionistic landscapes and distinctive, rich 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.

Across the exhibition, Omuku’s perennials include plants and flowers, spectacular skies, and her community—fixtures that endure through celebration and crisis alike. With works suspended from the ceiling, the installation will activate the gallery architecture in new ways while offering viewers a space of reprieve from the motions of daily life.

Nengi Omuku: Wild Things and Perennials will open concurrent with the artist’s ongoing solo museum exhibition, The Dance of the People and the Natural World, at Arnolfini, Bristol, United Kingdom.

Omuku lives and works between Lagos, Nigeria and London, United Kingdom. In 2023–24, Omuku's first institutional solo exhibition in the United Kingdom, The Dance of the People and the Natural World, was staged at Hastings Contemporary. In 2023–24 she was 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, Omuku was included in Dissolving Realms, curated by Katy Hessel, marking her first presentation with Kasmin. Her work was presented as part of the Bangkok Art Biennale in 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 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's work can be found in international public and private collections including the Baltimore Museum of Art, MD; Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL; HSBC Art Collection, London, UK; The Whitworth, Manchester, UK; and the Loewe Art Collection, among others.