ARTISTS
Nengi Omuku: As Water Never Touched
Crowds of faceless figures gather beneath stormy skies, bodies bathe in green water, singular, shifting subjects sit posed on a wooden stool. As Water Never Touched, a solo exhibition by Nengi Omuku at Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, West Palm Beach presents a powerful new body of work that delves into three key aspects of the artist鈥檚 practice: political paintings, landscapes and portraits. While dealing with different subject matter, these works are united by Omuku鈥檚 distinctive painting process and a blurring of temporal and spatial boundaries where figures and environments converge to create fragile, other-worldly scenes.
Omuku paints on a Nigerian fabric known as Sanyan, which was traditionally made from wild silk, obtained from the cocoons of moths and spun into a thick, rough fibre before being woven together to make fabric for traditional attire. Although production of this silk cloth has fallen into decline, the fabric is still woven in certain circles using industrial cotton as a substitute. Omuku sources her material from vintage markets in an attempt to reclaim the historical significance of the cloth as well as a lost sense of pride in craftsmanship. To make her canvases, typically on a vast scale, she stitches several strips of the fabric together, resulting in a textured surface dotted with tiny holes that allow the light to filter through, creating a sense of ephemerality while also imbuing each work with a strong sense of place.
In this exhibition, the fabric is suspended in space in a maze-like arrangement, allowing viewers to walk around and in-between the works. Each composition appears simultaneously whole and fragmentary as if fading into or out of focus. In Omuku鈥檚 words what the paintings capture is less a specific subject or event than a psychological state or a thought process, 鈥榮omething that you鈥檙e trying to grasp or make sense of that keeps eluding you.鈥� This is perhaps most obvious in Grace, which depicts a body lying on the floor of a house, wrapped in a red cloth. Brown grass is growing up around them, while nearby two other figures clad in white appear kneeling with their heads bowed in a pose of reverence. As with all of Omuku鈥檚 work, it is a scene that can be understood from multiple perspectives: as a depiction of sickness, death and grief and as a moment of transition or even renewal. The blocks of vivid yellow outside the window evoking blazing sunlight, or perhaps a portal to another world, a fresh beginning.
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Crowds of faceless figures gather beneath stormy skies, bodies bathe in green water, singular, shifting subjects sit posed on a wooden stool. As Water Never Touched, a solo exhibition by Nengi Omuku at Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, West Palm Beach presents a powerful new body of work that delves into three key aspects of the artist鈥檚 practice: political paintings, landscapes and portraits. While dealing with different subject matter, these works are united by Omuku鈥檚 distinctive painting process and a blurring of temporal and spatial boundaries where figures and environments converge to create fragile, other-worldly scenes.
Omuku paints on a Nigerian fabric known as Sanyan, which was traditionally made from wild silk, obtained from the cocoons of moths and spun into a thick, rough fibre before being woven together to make fabric for traditional attire. Although production of this silk cloth has fallen into decline, the fabric is still woven in certain circles using industrial cotton as a substitute. Omuku sources her material from vintage markets in an attempt to reclaim the historical significance of the cloth as well as a lost sense of pride in craftsmanship. To make her canvases, typically on a vast scale, she stitches several strips of the fabric together, resulting in a textured surface dotted with tiny holes that allow the light to filter through, creating a sense of ephemerality while also imbuing each work with a strong sense of place.
In this exhibition, the fabric is suspended in space in a maze-like arrangement, allowing viewers to walk around and in-between the works. Each composition appears simultaneously whole and fragmentary as if fading into or out of focus. In Omuku鈥檚 words what the paintings capture is less a specific subject or event than a psychological state or a thought process, 鈥榮omething that you鈥檙e trying to grasp or make sense of that keeps eluding you.鈥� This is perhaps most obvious in Grace, which depicts a body lying on the floor of a house, wrapped in a red cloth. Brown grass is growing up around them, while nearby two other figures clad in white appear kneeling with their heads bowed in a pose of reverence. As with all of Omuku鈥檚 work, it is a scene that can be understood from multiple perspectives: as a depiction of sickness, death and grief and as a moment of transition or even renewal. The blocks of vivid yellow outside the window evoking blazing sunlight, or perhaps a portal to another world, a fresh beginning.
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Crowds of faceless figures gather beneath stormy skies, bodies bathe in green water, singular, shifting subjects sit posed on a wooden stool.
