Nengi Omuku’s solo exhibition, ‘The Dance of People and the Natural World’ will be on view at Arnolfini, Bristol, U.K. from 29 June to 29 September 2024. Omuku will work with the local community at Arnolfini, with workshops by Sight Support West England and Creative Shift taking place in the exhibition.
Featuring the monumental work Eden and new additions such as Quorum and Rumours of War, The Dance of People and the Natural World brings together pieces first shown at her solo exhibition at Hastings Contemporary in 2023.
Omuku’s art seamlessly blends human figures with nature, exploring the relationship between individuals and collective thought, belonging, and psychological spaces beyond traditional Western landscape painting. Omuku’s human figures blend seamlessly with nature, exploring the relationship between individual and collective thought, belonging, and psychological spaces that transcend traditional Western landscape painting.
Omuku’s rich, dreamlike color palette is heavily influenced by the muted tones of Sanyan, a pre-colonial Nigerian textile woven from moth silk and cotton, blending Western oil painting traditions with Nigeria’s textile craftsmanship.
Hung away from the gallery wall or suspended from ceilings, Omuku invites the audience to see both sides of each cloth, revealing symbolic artistry and patterns like prayers of fertility woven within. Her paradisical landscapes and gardens draw inspiration from real places like Monet’s Garden in Giverny and the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture in Ibadan, as well as memories of her mother’s garden and imagined realms where flora and fauna take on fantastical forms.
Whether real or imagined, Omuku’s works offer landscapes to long for and find solace in, as she looks back at happier times and explores the slow passage of time, a continual theme since her solo exhibition Parables of Joy in 2022.
