March is the month we celebrate the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women across the world. On the 8th of March, the world took to the internet various writing and posts about the collective efforts of women to drive and sustain gender inclusivity and push the world to become a better place for everyone.
Although the day is over, the March still remains the month for the women. In this article, we have made a list of some African women who drive the art space with their creative and innovative works. Unfortunately, we cannot capture every one of them because of the enormous numbers of creative females, but this list should be able to give an insight of the astounding works the female African artists create.
Ayanfe Olarinde
Ayanfe Olarinde (b. 1996) is a self-taught visual artist currently employing scribbling techniques as well as photography in creating intricately detailed and multi-layered images.
In her work, Olarinde explores the themes of self-image, identity formation, social reality, collective history and mental health, while probing popular culture and the inefficiencies of the government in contemporary society. Drawing from imperfections in her personal, continuous journey for acceptance, Olarinde’s engagement with the scribbling technique serves to interrogate emotion while also exploring fluidity in form.
In 2018, Olarinde was shortlisted for the GTBank Days of Dorcas photography contest. In 2019, she was nominated for the Future Awards prize for arts, and went on to win the First Bank Magic 125 Creative Contest in the same year. In 2019, she also exhibited alongside other photographers at the 25th Bamako Encounters, Mali – OFF exhibition, and the Live-In Desires exhibition organised by the Goethe Institute Nigeria and The Nlele Institute. Olarinde has participated in several group exhibitions including Dis Lagos Life (2020) at SMO Contemporary Arts, un-TOLD (2020) at Retro Africa, Sculpting the City (2020) at Rele Gallery and Through Her Eyes (2019) Moeshen Art Gallery. She also participated in the 2020 edition of the iDesign Art Fair as well as presenting her work at the first edition of the African Artists Foundation’s Collectors Club.
Her internationally recognised series “Dem Bobo”, has been featured in several local and international publications including Reuters News, CNN, NowThisNews, Vogue, Channels, Konbini, MSN, Premium Times, NTA, and RADR Africa. In 2020, Olarinde was listed amongst the 100 Most Inspiring Women in Nigeria.
Nengi Omuku
Nengi Omuku is a Nigerian artist who received her BA and MA at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London. She has had solo and group exhibitions in the UK and Nigeria, and now lives and works in Nigeria. Her artistic practice has won her scholarships and awards, including the British Council CHOGM art award presented by Queen Elizabeth II.
Her work functions as a metaphor alluding to wider themes of difference, understanding, and mutual belonging. Through color she explores the idea that the human figure can be transformed based on the premise that things can look a certain way but can also be otherwise. Liberation from the physical form has led her into new territory, a moment-by-moment expression of beings that have been transformed from their present reality, reanimated through color and markings.
Nengi Omuku wishes to convey portraits: presences floating through active spaces, presences that have the aspiration of becoming events in their own right. She also frequently explores encounters – what happens when different forms meet. Another element of her work is the scape, in particular, the escape the bodies inhabit.
Chidinma Nnoli
Chidinma Nnoli (b. 1998, Nigeria) is a visual artist with a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Benin. In 2020, she was selected for the Rele Arts Foundation Young Contemporaries exhibition. Select group exhibitions include The Invincible Hands (2021), Shyllon Museum, Lagos, Orita Meta (2021), Rele Gallery, Los Angeles and In Situ (2021), Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York.
Nnoli held her debut solo exhibition To Wander Untamed in 2020 at Rele gallery, Lagos and had a solo presentation at the Armory Show in 2021. Her works are a part of several notable collections and have been featured in Hyperallergic, The New York Times, Colossal and Vogue. She currently lives and works in Lagos.
Peju Alatise
Peju Alatise is an interdisciplinary artist, architect and author of two novels based in Lagos, Nigeria. She started her professional career as an architect while running a private art studio. These days, she is a leading voice in contemporary art on the African continent. Her practise is relentlessly experimental and labour-intensive. She produces works across a variety of mediums, techniques and materials, including but not limited to paintings, film, installations, sculptures. Her work is also pointedly political, often asking damning questions of, and provoking reflections about the times, the state of affairs at home and abroad. Alatise’s work has, in the past, explored exploitative labour practices in Nigeria, child rights with a focus on young girls, state-sanctioned violence against citizens, migration and the policies that ensure that many die at sea, seeking a better life. Alatise produces through the lens of spirituality, Yoruba cosmology, leaning into ancient storytelling traditions and crafting alternative social imageries.
In 2020, Alatise was selected as an exhibiting artist for the Venice Architecture Biennale by curator, Hashim Sarkis. In 2018, Alatise founded the Alter-Native Artists Initiative, an incubatory artist collective that offers training programs, residencies to young, emerging artists. In 2017, Alatise was selected as one of the exhibiting artists at Nigeria’s debut pavilion at the Venice Art Biennial, where she showed, “Flying Girls”, an installation of eight life-size sculptures, of little girls amidst a flurry of birds and leaves, with wings on their backs, dreaming of a brighter future, exhibited with a sound installation of little girls playing. Described as haunting and beautiful, the sculpture “bears witness to the maltreatment, discrimination, and atrocities that have become commonplace in a society where very little attention is given to the development of the girl child”. In the same year, Alatise was announced as the winner of the prestigious FNB Art Prize and her installation, O is the New Cross, a commentary on episodes of “jungle justice” in Nigeria, was the central solo exhibition of the FNB Johannesburg Art Fair that year. Alatise is a fellow at the National Museum of African Art, part of the Smithsonian Institution. Her work has been collected by the Smithsonian Institute. Her debut novel Orita Meta, chronicling the interwoven path of three women, was nominated for the ANA/Flora Nwapa Prize for Women’s Writing in 2006.
Chigozie Obi
Chigozie Obi (b. 1997) is a multi-dimensional visual artist. Her work explores experimentation with multiple materials to tell stories formed from personal/societal experiences.
Obi’s work authenticates her keen interest for the human aspect of life, the body, beauty standards and the strive for self-acceptance. She aims to create sustained conversations about people and society – the cultural narratives adopted and how it affects people in it, especially women.
Obi obtained a bachelors degree of Visual Arts from the Creative Arts department, University of Lagos in 2017. Her work has been featured in several group exhibitions and sales, which include, ‘Unity’, Vollery Gallery, Dubai (2022), ‘Intersections’, Gallery Affinity, Lagos, Nigeria (2021), ‘Are You Comfortable Now?’, A Whitespace Creative Agency, Lagos, Nigeria (2021), ‘Real Life Is Fragile’, Thinkspace Projects, Los Angeles, US (2020), MoCada Museum’s silent auction (2019). She was selected as Arthouse Contemporary’s Artist of the month – July 2018, one of the recipients of the inaugural Tilga Fund for Arts Grant (2020) and the Art.ng Grant for Visual Artists (2020). She is the winner of the Access Bank ‘Art X Prize (2021), one of the winners of The Future Awards Prize For Art (2021), one of the shortlisted artists for The Alpine Fellowship Art Prize (2020) and recently concluded her residency at Gasworks, London (April – June 2022).
