This January, Forbes released a list of women who are proving that age has nothing to do with achievement. This list cuts across Europe, Middle East and Africa. Here are the notable female artists recognized for leading the way throughout the African industry.
Nike Davies-Okundaye
In Nigeria’s Ogidi, Nike Davies-Okundaye was born in 1951. She was surrounded by the customs of traditional weaving and dying in Ogidi, Kogi State, in central Nigeria. Her great-grandmother, parents, and other family members were musicians and artisans with specialties in leather, fabric weaving, adire manufacturing, indigo dying, and cloth dying. Her early years were spent in Osogbo, Western Nigeria, which is now Osun State. Osogbo is regarded as one of Nigeria’s principal centers for art and culture. Young Nike was exposed to indigo dying and adire manufacture while growing up in Osogbo, which dominated her informal instruction.
Following the death of her mother and grandmother, she had to move in with her great grandmother who was a weaver and an “Adire” textile maker/dyer during her lifetime. Growing up in such ancient environment and the loss of her mother and grandmother had an impact on her educational background.
Nike Okundaye’s father, late Nicolas Ojo Allah, was a village traditional drummer and baskets weaver in his day. Due to little availability of funds, he could not assist young Nike with western education. This pushes her to teach in Universities and is globally acknowledged for her craft and knowledge.
Having a geniune love for various forms of art, Nike Okundaye created an Aso-Oke textile weaving center at Ogidi-Ijumu near Kabba in Kogi State in 1996. She did this also to empower the women of the village by employing and empowering more than 200 women in the Aso-Oke textile weaving center. Nike Okundaye has also contributed to adding value to the Nigerian Economy.
From her first solo exhibition at the Goethe Institute, Lagos in 1968, Nike has grown to become one of the major names on the international art circuit. In 2013 Chief Nike’s painting with the famous adire symbols in the background was accepted by the world’s largest museum, The Smithsonian. She ‘represents the new breed of African female artist, many of whose realities are now international, though in essence they are perpetuating the living tradition of female artists and ‘cloth-queens’, controlling heady empires of fabric- wealthy powerful women’. Nike is known all over the world for promoting her designs through exhibitions and workshops in Nigeria, USA, Belgium, Germany, Austria and Italy, to mention a few.
Now, she is the owner of the largest art gallery in West Africa which boasts a collection of about 8,000 diverse artworks from various Nigerian artists.
Azza Fahmy
Azza Fahmy is an Egyptian jewellery designer, and the founder of the design house Azza Fahmy Jewellery.Fahmy was the first woman to train in Egypt’s jewellery quarter, Khan El Khalili. The designer started out in the midst of men, working and learning tricks of Jewellery making. Then went on to debut the Azza Fahmy’s collaboration, worn by the renowned actress Souad Hosney. The artists signature comes to life, by combining Gold and Silver to attain a taste only her could ever imagine.
In 2013, Azza established The Design Studio by Azza Fahmy – DSAF in Cairo, an international fine jewellery house of great provenance, that has become part of the fashion palette, with unique designs, handmade to perfection using and preserving ancient techniques. With a collaboration with Alchimia, the studio became the first and only professional jewellery making & design school in Egypt and the region providing education with international standards. In the same year, the Jewellery brand stated its digital and online presence with the establishment of its website.
Azza Fahmy Jewellery trademark combines cultural inscriptions and intricate craftsmanship by bringing uniquely handcrafted Jewellery inspired by 7000 years of history & modern cultural references to the world. They are passionately engaged in story telling with timeless jewellery to the Modern eclectic cultural curators.
