Chioma Ebinama

ABOUT

Chioma Ebinama is a Nigerian- American artist who works primarily in watercolor but her expanding oeuvre also includes ceramics, soft sculpture, and wearable art. She is currently represented by Maureen Paley [London, UK], and has had various exhibitions internationally.

Through the Art Rug Projects collaboration, Ebinama experiments with yet another medium, that of the carpet. She has created a series of six handmade rugs, in silk and wool. The thorough details of her designs have been exquisitely translated in the carpet’s medium and the techniques used highlight the artist’s sheer talent.

A natural storyteller with a background in sociology and illustration, Ebinama draws from a wealth of visual resources ranging from the craft and ritual traditions of West Africa, to the watercolours of the Indian Subcontinent and the popular iconography of Japanese comics. She is interested in how the archetypal images across craft , religions, and myths of many cultures, reflect a universal story about how we collectively navigate change, violence, beauty, prejudice and nonconformity.

BIO

Chioma Ebinama [b. 1988, Maryland, USA] is a Nigerian-American artist, who lives and works in Athens, Greece. Her recent exhibitions include A Spiral Shell at Maureen Paley in London, tipota at Fortnight Institute, Lay all your love on me at Salon94 in New York and Leave the thorns and take the rose at The Breeder in Athens. She is currently exhibiting a body of work in the Hayward Gallery touring exhibition Hollow Earth: Art, Caves, and The Subterranean Imaginary developed in partnership with Nottingham Contemporary.

Her work can be found in the Whitney Museum Collection, Perez Museum Collection and LACMA Collection. This year she was awarded the Ezra Jack Keat Honor Award for her illustrations for Emile and the Field, written by Kevin Young, the director of the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and published by Penguin-Random House in 2022. She is working on her first manuscript for a children’s book set to be published in 2024 by Penguin Random House. She is pleased to be sharing a new body of work this summer at Maureen Paley, Morena di Luna, in Hove.