Bio

Nengi Omuku (b. 1987, Nigeria) is a Lagos and London-based artist who blends impressionistic landscapes and figure painting with her West African heritage. She paints individuals and groups of figures finding respite in nature in oil paint on sanyan, a fabric traditionally hand spun by the Yoruba people, which she often commissions in an effort to keep the weaving tradition alive.

She was selected to join the inaugural Artist Council of the Museum of West African Art in Benin City in 2025, and has received numerous awards and residencies, including an ACBMT and Arnolfini International Artist Residency Award, Civitella Ranieri Residency, Black Rock Senegal Residency, World Trade Organization Residency, and the British Council CHOGM Art Award. She will open a solo exhibition at the de Young Museum in San Francisco in 2026-28, and she staged a traveling solo exhibition at Hastings Contemporary and Arnolfini, UK in 2023-24. She has also exhibited at the ICA San Francisco, Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz, Saint Louis Art Museum, among others. Selected collections include the Baltimore Museum of Art, Norton Museum of Art, Newark Museum of Art, and the UK Government Art Collection.

Abstract

In this talk, Omuku explores her interdisciplinary practice that merges painting with textile histories to investigate cultural memory and the endurance of indigenous Nigerian traditions. Working with sanyan—a precolonial handwoven fabric made from cotton and silk—Omuku paints oil on gessoed strips of cloth, creating hybrid surfaces that blur the boundaries between image and material, language and memory.