Samuel Nnorom represented by Kates-Ferri Projects

‍Samuel Nnorom, When Form Takes Over Precarity, 2023, African Print Fabric, 224 × 437 × 40 cm. / 88.2 x 172 × 15.7 in.

Samuel Nnorom (b.1990) is a Nigerian-born visual. He discovered his talent at the age of 9 years while assisting his father in his shoe workshop – where he started making life drawings of customers that visited the shop. He was also influenced by his mother's tailoring workshop –as a kid who played with colourful fabrics with sewing needles and thread. He went further to develop this talent through apprenticeship, training, workshops, Exhibitions, art school and practice.

Samuel holds an MFA in sculpture from the University of Nigeria Nsukka and is a full-time practising studio artist with many awards, exhibitions and residencies which include 3rd and 1st prize for the National Gallery of Art 2010 and 2012 respectively, won prizes in 2016, 2017 and 2019 editions of the Life in My City Art Festival. He was the first prize recipient (leatherwork category) of the Icreate Africa 2019. Nnorom has received invitations to important workshops and group exhibitions, including the international art workshop by IICD at the United States Embassy, Abuja (2019), Rele Young Contemporary Bootcamp 2021, published in an international magazine the UK (zine, issue 11, artist responding to issues) and Haus-a-rest, issue 17 Material Damage 2021,  Cassirer Welz Award, Bag factory and Strauss & co South Africa 2022, recipient of 2022 Royal Over-Sea League and Art House Residency London, recipient of Guest Art Space (GAS) fellowship and residency from Yinka Shonibare Foundation 2022, shortlisted for Prince Claus Funds CAREC and Mentorship 2022/2023, Noldor fellowship and Residency 2023,  and several others. He belongs to the New Nsukka School of Art and he is currently exploring Okirika clothes and Ankara fabric using bubble techniques as sculptural media while interrogating human experiences that relate to consumption, environment, sociopolitical and economic issues through questioning. 

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Artist Statement:

Samuel’s body of work is made from pieces of Ankara fabric/ African wax print fabrics collected from either tailor's debris or cast-off clothes from homes and waste foams from furniture workshops, wrapped and stitched into bubbles of various colours and sizes; through actions like sewing, rolling, tying, stringing, suspending, cutting, among others, which navigate boundaries between textiles, painting and sculpture in a poetic rendition.

He is interested in the identity and meaning that fabrics represent especially the Ankara fabric which is mostly consumed in his local community and west Africa. Fabric suggests to him a social structure or social organization that weaves humanity into society; in the case of “fabric of society” or “social fabric”, however, it is peculiar to different societies while bubble suggests a structure that holds or stores something for a period of time. His mission through actions like cutting, rolling, stitching, sewing and installation is to engage viewers in self-interrogation, critical thinking and questioning of sociopolitical structures and the human conditions of what truth and conspiracy connote to our daily lives wrapped in bubbles.

“Burnt Roses” wrapped, tied, stitched, dyed and painted into bubbles of uncertainties disguising itself as a mirage. The metaphor for “burnt roses” represents good luck and good fortune. “Yellow Quake” in a dark moment when all we stitch up are negative thoughts in our bubbles, we become neutral to standing up for what we believe and gradual we became dark. The yellow quake is a call to action to embrace hope, happiness and clarity amid “Dark Matters”.

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