CHIDINMA NNOLI

During her residency, artist Chidinma Nnoli took inspiration from the 2019 novel by Chigozie Obioma, An Orchestra of Minorities. Highlighting Igbo mythology and placing the Chi at the forefront, Nnoli creates soulful paintings that prise the female body from the clutch of the male gaze.

In Igbo mythology, Chukwu (Supreme God) uses a part of themselves, Chi (personal god/guardian spirit), to create each person; this Chi remains in a person's body, its influence determining their success and failures, measuring up their decisions. At the end of a person's life, the Chi is said to leave its human host and return to Chukwu to give an account of the person's life. In this body of work, Nnoli loosely creates a visual representation of this account where she questions, where do fate and free will intersect?

Nnoli's bodies are tenderly painted; in some works, they are accompanied by shadow-like figures, their Chi embracing them from behind. Steady hands seem to guide and comfort in a gesture that may be best compared to that between mother and daughter. In painting these bodies, the first nude body of work of Nnoli's practice, the artist strove to separate them from their historical sexualisation. The bodies are soft, rendered with care, but without focus on their specific parts. This nakedness goes beyond the exposure of their bodies; the faces of the figures feel stripped bare, and their raw emotion draws the focus of the paintings. Perhaps this view is how they might be seen by their Chi, open and unguarded. Where they are ill at ease, their Chi has an omniscient surety, bringing a guiding force to the paintings. In Igbo culture, it is said that man can never outperform their Chi. This acceptance of fate and circumstance is comforting, and this feeling bleeds into the paintings.

In Heaven is Here If You Want It (ii), 2024, a lone cross stands stark amongst the murky background, a returning motif in Nnoli's work. The relationship between Igbo and Catholicism in Nigeria is a complex one. Though the two religions have formed a hybrid in some regions, Catholicism's presence in West Africa is deeply rooted in colonialism. For the artist, these works act to reconnect her with her Igbo heritage, allowing for the syncretisation of the familiar catholic beliefs she was born into and the evidence of Igbo mythological and pre-colonial religious practices.