Reimagining Relationships to the Natural World: Nengi Omuku at Frieze London

Following its widely acclaimed debut in 2023, the Artist-to-Artist section made a return to Frieze London this year, standing out as a key feature of the fair's artist-led program. It presented six solo exhibitions, featuring an artist chosen by a prominent, world-renowned counterpart, known for supporting emerging voices. The initiative highlights Frieze’s ongoing commitment to fostering creative connections within its global network. 

Nengi Omuku, 'Nzogbu Nzogbu', 2024, oil on sanyan, 130cm x 120cm

It was Nengi Omuku’s mesmerising display, co-organised by Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London and Kasmin, New York, and selected by renowned British artist Yinka Shonibare, which sparked my curiosity. Presented are three spectacular paintings, possessing an abundance of references to the natural world. Having trained as a horticulturist and florist, nature serves as a key source of inspiration for Omuku; its influence provides a grounding force, a solace, in her work. As Omuku explains: “This comes from both a personal place, telling my story as a gardener and florist, as well as what I feel is a collective leaning, and re-communion with nature today.” In each instance, the vibrancy of her chosen colour palette, coupled with the indistinct fluidity of her brushwork, adorns the works with a somewhat dream-like quality. She takes her inspiration from paradisiacal places real and imagined: Monet’s Garden in Giverny; the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture in Ibadan; the scenery of Perugia, Italy; memories of her mother’s garden; fantastical forms which permeate our dreams. Moreover, formal elements, her chosen medium (oil paint), and a somewhat Fauvist palette of complimentary colours, recall a Western painterly tradition. Yet, these are not mere landscape paintings. From amidst the entanglement of flora and fauna, hazy figures begin to emerge – sometimes barely visible. Displaying “collective responses to uncertainty and internal turmoil that have arisen as a result of the political instability in Nigeria and globally,” the anonymity of the figures and their fracture into the landscape subsequently offers a universal resonance. The seamless blend of people and plants not only contributes to the hallucinatory quality of the utopian landscape, but their juxtaposition highlights “the absurdity of what it means to fight in a garden setting.” By speculatively reimagining the relationship between humans and the natural world, what Omuku presents us with is instead a portrait of harmony, of hope.

Nengi Omuku, 'Swing Low', 2024, oil on sanyan, 219cm x 195cm

Suspended in mid-air, as though floating within the space, the three paintings are set upon Sanyan, an Aso-oke textile traditionally crafted by the Yoruba people. They are immersive: we are permitted not only to enter into the landscape Omuku depicts but circulate them to enjoy the textural materiality of her chosen surface. By lending compositional weight to the pre-colonial fabric Omuku imbues the works with their cultural significance. Intricately woven by the hands of West-Nigerian Yoruba and stitched together, the very surface displays the marks of its construction. This situates an interpretation of Omuku’s works within the poetics of time: the textile is both narrative, and the vehicle for it. By applying her delicate brushwork onto the Indigenous fabric, Omuku presents us with a palimpsestic dialogue. Her figures and landscapes, painted on canvases rooted in cultural heritage, evolve into nuanced, yet ambiguous symbols of collective memory. It perhaps comes as no surprise Nigerian-born artist Nengi Omuku was nominated by Yinka Shonibare. Perfectly encapsulating, and indeed championing the wider sentiments of this year’s Frieze, Omuku offers us that elegantly balanced combination of enlightenment and escapism: “when working with oils on sanyan, I’m aware that I’m bringing together western and West African heritage. I really enjoy being in the middle. It helps me have a broader view of the world.”