Orie. (Amarachi Okafor)
Abuja, Nigeria
I am an innovative institutionally-oriented artist who makes quirky singular artworks investigating human actions in society. Learn more- www.amarachiokafor.art
Message
From Nigeria, Amarachi Okafor is a multi-medium artist practising consistently since the early 2000s. Her Sculptures, Paintings, Installations and Art Events speak about a troubled, happy, and responsible society, as she explores and transforms used commonplace material.
Inspired by people (issues of living, human actions) and the everyday; her art-making involves research and coordination, exploring design and architecture - shapes, forms... and the history of things (everyday, mundane items).
She enjoys experimentation and participation, creating singular, quirky artworks about human actions in society.
Amarachi’s artistic training rewarded her with a BA (Painting) in 2002, an MFA (Sculpture) in 2006 (both from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka), and an MA in Curatorial Practice in 2012 from Falmouth University, Cornwall, UK. She has exhibited work and practised, had and shared studio spaces worldwide in Africa, Europe, Asia, the Americas, the Caribbean Islands, and the Middle East.
She was a recipient of the Unesco Aschberg artists’ award in 2007, leading to a residency at Lademoen Kustnerverksteder [LKV] in Trondheim, Norway; Commonwealth Foundation Commonwealth Connections recipient in 2009, which supported her travels for research projects and a collaborative exhibition in Nassau, Bahamas. Other residencies are – Nkd, Norway, Popopstudios, Nassau, The Bahamas.
In 2014, she was awarded the jury prize at the National Art Competition (Nigeria). She has exhibited at Babel Art Space, Norway, Oriel Mostyn Gallery, Wales, Manchester Art Gallery, UK, and the Jogjakarta Biennial, Indonesia. She produces socially engaged participatory public art projects with audiences in galleries and alternative art spaces, a unique endeavour she refers to as relational public art.
At home in Nigeria, she works from the research and production space she initiated in Abuja. Her unique art practice is international and also well-rooted locally.
In her research and documentation interests, she worked in the curatorial department of the National Gallery of Art, Nigeria, as a curatorial assistant, rising to Senior Curator, from 2008 to 2015. Currently, she works from time to time, in collaboration with institutions and projects around the world, promoting and exhibiting work by other artists. She was the Africa Commissioner for the Gangwon Triennial in 2021. She was twice the Curator of the Nigeria national annual youth art festival, LIMCAF, in 2023 and 2024.
Statement
My Paintings, Sculptures, and Installations explore transformation and innovation while communicating playfulness and quiet enjoyment.
I engage the histories that are fixed in used things, which tell of our lived lives held within them, as they have witnessed these. They bear our past and present actions, and in their tale about these, they reveal our future. They embody memory. I investigate and try to fathom this memory and experience.
My work is inspired by people- living (actions) and the everyday. Influenced by architecture and design—lines, shapes, forms, and the histories of ordinary, mundane materials-, I enjoy innovation and participation. I create unique, quirky artworks that reference human actions and activities in society, and how these affect the general human condition.
I live and work in a quiet neighbourhood outside Abuja, Nigeria, where I find freedom and delight in assembling local found materials into objects of contemplation that I sometimes invite my audiences to contribute to. Experimentation, an affinity for fabrics, and curiosity with colour and movement drive me. I sew and patch to re-construct. I dance my marks in specific movements with paint, scooped and laid down using my palm and fingers as key tools. I make lines and shapes on the sewing machine - functional or non-functional, joyful or irate stitches - giving form to my paintings and writing into them. I labour to evoke upbeat emotions in my audience - perhaps a quiet smile or hilarity at noticing something playful in a composition.
My work hinges on reflections about events in my life, and in others’ lives - acts of injustice that cause turmoil and pain, even our actions against ourselves. Through my work, I question individual choices and societal culture. What are the costs of our choices? I probe and reimagine the nature of these costs and how they might affect us, determining our condition.
Reconstruction by stitching and patching is my main process of making. It is healing for my soul when I am engrossed with ordinary materials which, through their scars, speak extraordinarily about where they have been and what they did in their past lives. I learnt in my early teenage years from my mother how to sew and work the sewing machine. After my MFA in Sculpture, I apprenticed locally with an artisan in Umuahia (my home town) to cultivate this ability.
I explore fibres in found used fabrics; naturally occurring fibres in local food plants - okra, sugarcane, sisal, banana - made into handmade paper; fibres in thread and used cartons; synthetic fibres/plastic in recovered cigarette filters, and used plastic bags. The popular Nigerian plastic carrier bag, an evidently paltry yet menacing item, features plentifully in my work. I purchase used plastic bags and cigarette butts off the streets and landfills to utilise them. Materiality is vital in my work, as is the idea of Containment - which I interpret as - carrying, bearing, harbouring, restraint, and control - mirrors of our actions in society.