Nengi Omuku: We Were Like Those Who Dreamed

Pippy Houldsworth Gallery presents "We Were Like Those Who Dreamed", Nigerian artist Nengi Omuku’s second solo exhibition with the gallery.

In new paintings Omuku explores the politics of green spaces in urban centres. With humanity’s relationship to the natural world under threat, she questions the power structures that govern climate catastrophe, proposing the garden as a radical symbol of equality and inclusiveness. In Omuku’s compositions figures are transplanted from contemporary and archival images of Lagos’ densely populated centre into Impressionistic landscapes, characterised by lush foliage and panoramic vistas, painted with rapid, pointillist brushstrokes in a distinctive Fauvist palette. Gardens offer their visitors the opportunity to learn how to move through the world more harmoniously and sustainably, while reconnecting with nature, something that Omuku has referenced with frequency in her work. Her Edenic landscapes act as sites of resistance, extolling the solace to be found in the natural world, and its connections to themes of rest and refuge.

The lack of green spaces is particularly critical in Lagos, which has often been described as a ‘concrete jungle’, in no small part due to rapid urbanisation that privileges construction and expansion over public gardens. Omuku is acutely aware of socio-economic tensions birthed from flawed political systems, something that her work explores in depth. In Dream Logic, faceless people queue for fuel, sitting atop empty jerry cans, while One Particular Man depicts crowds of people gathered, as another walks to refuel his broken-down car. The subjects of both paintings are transposed from urban settings into arcadias distinguished by dense thickets of shrubbery, or a panoramic cloudscape, parting thunderously to reveal streaks of sunrise. In Omuku’s hands the garden is a crucible of change, symbolic of the transformative power of faith, ritual and reverie.

Omuku paints on sanyan, a tightly woven, hand spun cloth rooted in the pre-colonial history of the Yoruba people. By bringing together western painting traditions with West African heritage textiles, she reflects on the preservation of indigenous culture within a social and political context open-endedly impacted by the legacy of colonialism. Works such as A quiet nation capture this dichotomy: a girl jumps rope in front of an apartment block partially obscured by a thicket of tangled branches, the building’s Brutalist architecture mirroring the vertiginous strips of sanyan on which Omuku composes the work. Since 2022, Omuku has taken an active role in the production of sanyan for her paintings, working directly with local artisans in Ilorin in Western Nigeria to revive the tradition. While previous works were made on vintage fabric bolts, Omuku’s new works are made on contemporary sanyan, fostering cultural revival and rebuilding memory through the reinvigoration of ancestral practices.

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