WEAVING FUTURES AT ART X LAGOS

Eight years after her first ART X Lagos group presentation with Art House (now, Kó Gallery), Nengi Omuku unveils a new artwork titled ‘This Too Shall Pass’. In her exhibition, External Realities, Internal Geographies, Omuku recognizes the history of textiles in Nigeria alongside her usual thematic undertakings of collective trauma. 

Omuku’s contribution is a painting on what has come to be recognized as her signature vintage sanyan, in conversation with a series of stools by designer Ituen Basi, commissioned to fundraise for the former’s charity, The Art of Healing (TAOH). Basi’s use of woven silk and cotton interacts with the painting’s commentary on the declining legacy of weaving and offers hope in its use of new sanyan, woven and spun in recent years. 

Nengi Omuku reflects on her use of both vintage and recently woven sanyan as her own “way of continuing the tradition of cotton spinning and cotton weaving to sort of keep it alive in my own small way.” In Yoruba culture, the wild Anaphe or Epanaphe silk used to weave sanyan – “the cloth of the elders” – is a longstanding tradition in which the cocoons of the moths living under ancient iroko trees were collected, fibers spun and handwoven on narrow looms. In the east and north of the country, similar weaving traditions date back as early as the 19th century, before colonisation. These silkworms spin collective nests made of raw silk, known for its strength and elasticity. 

Today, Omuku casts her memory, and art’s ability to remember, to these culturally significant practices and subtly asks the viewer to hold space for both remembrance and continuity. 

Omuku marks the tenth anniversary of ART X Lagos using a sanyan canvas made from a complete set that the artist put aside for a special occasion. Her current art practice involves sourcing and commissioning sanyan fabric that is then taken apart at her studio. The stitching of the panels, sewn together by a narrow loom, form traditional Nigerian attire like geles or iro, some of which still have the signatures of their owners written on them, and are carefully undone before being reversed so she can paint on the back of the textile. This is done purposefully to display the fabric’s past life. She explains, “When the painting is hung, they’re not pinned against the wall. Traditionally, they’re hung in the middle of the space to acknowledge the objecthood of the textile.”

Omuku’s use of sanyan grew, partly out of necessity, following a move back to Nigeria that found her searching, with little luck, for good-quality canvases for her work. What she discovered was a rich history of weaving in Nigeria and other parts of West Africa, which not only spoke of the history of creativity and craftsmanship on the African continent but also breathed life into the potential of this declining resource. She recognises that she wanted “to talk about this historic heritage textile and find a way for it to all be in conversation with contemporary painting.” Several years after her discovery, Omuku’s work with contemporary weavers in Lagos and Ibadan shows a commitment to continuing a ‘history of making,’ as she refers to it, that honors the past and supports the future that many want to see.

As an artist, the most obvious form of “making” comes in the work Omuku chooses to produce, which, in many ways, hints at a similar scarcity that nudged her towards the medium she presently uses. She reveals that, “For the piece for ART X Lagos, what you will see is that the people who are in the painting came from fuel queues. I looked for archival and contemporary images of things that I have experienced as well. The scarcity of fuel, in spite of the fact that we are an oil-producing country.” Suddenly, the adage, ‘This Too Shall Pass,’ that inspired the title of Omuku’s painting, makes even more sense. 

Like much of her work in the last few years, themes of collective unrest and turmoil are presented and processed specifically atop the artist’s unmistakable impressionist interpretation of the landscape. This lifts the saturated bodies in her work out of their reality and into a new setting. For Omuku, addressing these inevitable truths is not only a part of healing but an essential fragment of being. The title, ‘This Too Shall Pass,’ is more than just imaginary. It echoes relentlessly in the minds of Nigerians, past and present. This nods at the theme of this year’s ART X Lagos, ‘Imagining Otherwise, No Matter the Tide’, which addresses how, when we think on the future of Nigeria, our individual and collective imaginations can be a vital lifeline for the actualisation of healthier spatialities. 

In the same breath, Omuku permits herself to unbridle her mind and her work, from the imbalances of the collective lived experience and departs from her previous depictions that sought to paint these moments “almost letter for letter in a very realistic way but still impressionistic manner.” From the subject of “chaos and death and buildings collapsing,” to supply shortages and dwindling industries, Omuku’s work recognizes that “it’s one thing as an artist to dwell on the present and another thing to imagine a different kind of future.” Thus, the viewer is presented with artwork that marries the ecological and ontological and chooses to process them therapeutically and create new environments for people to come in and rest.

Painting, in particular, “becomes like a kind of prayer. Like trying to invoke [a] reality that may not be present today but is something that I want to see”, not something entirely realised but whispered in indistinctly fluid brushstrokes and the dream-like undertones of a soft colour palette.

In reality, Omuku does more than just paint an imagined future for Nigerians. Her foundation, The Art of Healing, brings artistry and creative engagement into clinical spaces to support healing through art therapy. The charity was registered in Nigeria in 2019, inspired by its founder's collaboration with Hospital Rooms, a UK-based art and mental health charity that creates murals and hosts workshops in locked intensive care psychiatric wards. Seeing how the themes of collective grief, healing, and mental well-being are central to her artistic practice, “sort of jumped off the surface of the painting,” Omuku was driven to expose others to the therapeutic benefits of making art that she saw “have real-world impact for people that need access to art as a form of therapy.” 

Omuku pulls from her own experience of painting. “I feel the quiet that comes to my mind while I’m making art,” she shares, “which is really why it was important for me and my cofounder to set up the foundation.” A few years after its inception, Ebisan Akinsanya joined the foundation as a cofounder. While the pandemic had delayed initial progress, post-lockdown efforts led to the installation of seven murals at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) and the facilitation of art workshops that reached over 500 service users, including patients and caregivers.

More recently, TAOH concluded a global scoping review led by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and Jameel Arts and Health Lab called The Hospital Murals Evaluation (HoME). As the sole African representative, TAOH contributed essential data on the impact that murals in hospitals and other clinical settings can have on the people who view them, alongside contributors from Slovenia, the US and the UK. Understanding the climate in which the foundation operates, this research feels even more daring. Omuku admits, “It was a rigorous entry, but now that we’ve done this, we’re being invited to do more,” a promising sign of a changing tide driven by art’s ability to heal and restore within clinical spaces and more.