Ozioma Onuzulike

The exhibition Strings the Length of Our Palm’s Seal is the third solo exhibition outside Africa by Ozioma Onuzulike (Nigeria, 1972) and his first solo exhibition in Germany.

A ceramicist, poet, and scholar, Onuzulike began his career as an artist at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, where he is now a professor. As an expert in ceramic art and African art history, his body of work re-conceptualizes traditional West African ceramic materials and techniques as a tool for political art, integrating an alternative function to the utilitarian craft of pottery. Through high-fired earthen- and stoneware clay works, Onuzulike articulates analogies for deeply embedded traumas from civil wars and corporative battles across the continent, for memories that continue to shape and form the present.

Among recent works by the artist, the exhibition presents a series of large-scale ceramic installations that hang like woven tapestries. In works like the Agbada (“1,500 Brand”) and Extra- Large-Sized Jumper, both from 2022, beads of terracotta palm kernel shells are strung into vertical cells. Here the artist combines agricultural with socio-political-economic elements by comparing palm kernels to beads, and in so doing, to the history of colonialism and the slave trade. In another series, The Honeycomb Project, hexagonal holes cut into clay slabs are placed consecutively like tiles to mimic the architecture of beehives. A product of immense labor, detail, and craft, this series was initially conceived as an homage to the importance of frontline workers during the first wave of the 2020 pandemic, whose protective clothing reminded the artist of honey farming. Both of these series become significant demurrals against the lasting passages of transatlantic trade routes and the global distribution of natural resources.

Ozioma Onuzulike (Achi, Enugu State, Nigeria, 1972) graduated First Class from the Department of Fine and Applied Arts, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, where he was recently Head of Department and professor of ceramic art and African art and design history, and is currently Director of the university’s Institute of African Studies. In his work, he often configures the multiplicity of individual units to represent the continuous nature of socio-political and environmental issues experienced in Africa through the aesthetic, symbolic and metaphorical nature of clay and its working processes.

His solo exhibition, Seed Yams of Our Land, was held at the Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA), Lagos, Nigeria, in 2019, along with a presentation of his poetry collection of the same title also published by the CCA. Outside of Nsukka, his works in the honeycomb and palm kernel beads series were first exhibited in The Way We Are, his solo show of 2021 at the Ko Gallery in Lagos, Nigeria. His works were included in the just concluded exhibition at the Museum of Archeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge, UK, arising from the [Re:]Entanglements Research Project led by Professor Paul Basu. He has participated in international art fairs, including Art X Lagos (2021), Armory Show, New York (2022) and 1-54 London (2022). Onuzulike is a fellow of the Civitella Ranieri Centre, Umbertide, Perugia, Italy, where he undertook a residency under the Unesco-Aschberg Bursary for Artists, and an alumnus of the prestigious Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine, USA.