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Chorus
Nengi Omuku -
Nengi Omuku, (B.1987, Nigeria) has completed both her BA and MA at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London. Omuku’s work is inspired by the politics of the body and the complexities that surround identity and difference. With every journey, she considers how human beings position themselves in space in relation to other beings. Foremost on her mind are the ways in which the body needs to adapt in order to belong. It is constantly selecting and gathering its identity, mentally, physically and emotionally.
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The work entitled Baptism also explores the impact of the gaze, but here, two groups of people surround a female figure lying on the ground. While the scene is initially disconcerting as we wonder at the inaction of the crowd and the woman’s still body, their relaxed body language and the expansive, undulating surface of the ground suggests a different kind of gathering. “I imagine the ground as a body of water,” explains Omuku. “The crowd, to me, are a homogeneous body observing the process of change, of falling and being renewed.” This is an idea that’s also touched upon in Star gazers, a painting which depicts a group of people gazing at a mysterious, explosive pink form. The shape was inspired by a beautiful cluster of old bamboos that the artist saw on a trip in Nigeria, but Omuku has deliberately abstracted the original image to create the presence of a fiery, energetic and perhaps even spiritual force while the dramatic, tumultuous sky once again signals a period of change.
In this way, Omuku creates a captivating tension between movement and stillness, connection and distance, and while there is still a palpable sense of unease that expresses the complexities and politics of the gaze, these new works gesture towards notions of transition and healing through gestural brushstrokes, warm colours and dynamic, abstract forms. -
Chorus: Nengi Omuku
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