Chidinma Nnoli (b. 1998 Enugu, Nigeria) is an artist working primarily with painting.
Between the experience of spiritual life and all that can be considered material, Nnoli explores, through a sage use of painting, the flow of the narrative of a single subject, superimposing the past on the present and vice versa, constantly referring to the self in conflict with a background often saturated with religion and gendered obligations. Nnoli thinks of her practice as a mapping of space, of the body and of a landscape that preserves remnants of memories, wherein the ideas of freedom and entrapment continuously overlap. At the center of her conceptual attention is the act of telling stories, involving feminism and placing emphasis on the personal as political. Her process often involves the use of textures, impasto, text (of self written poetry) and erasure. What follows are works that allude to and question the hostile structures that often limit the actions of women, especially within traditional, religious and familial spaces. Thinking about the functionality of painting, in addition to its ability to be a formidable means of affirmation, Chidinma Nnoli wants to recreate what can be principally felt; something intense, poetic and balanced in spite of its continuous state of becoming.
This past year, Nnoli has pondered the Essay “Natural Synthesis” by the Nigerian modernist artist Uche Okeke. Written right after Nigeria's Independence from Britain, Natural Synthesis explores the reclamation of one's historical, artistic agency within a post-colonial Nigerian art climate saturated with Western colonial influences. With this, Nnoli currently explores a visual language that allows for the syncretization of the familiar catholic beliefs she was born into and the evidence of Igbo mythological and pre-colonial religious practices. For her, there is a duty and a need to pursue painting within a contemporary context and traditional Igbo ways of making, seeing, and thinking.
Nnoli earned her BFA from the University of Benin, Nigeria and has gone on to participate in critical residencies and exhibitions (solo and group) internationally. She currently lives and works in Lagos.