Image courtesy of the artist and Pearl Lam Galleries
September 2024—Pearl Lam Galleries is thrilled to announce its Asian representation of Nigerian artist Samuel Nnorom. Nnorom is a multi-award-winning artist whose work poetically crosses tapestry-like sculpture and pre-loved Ankara wax fabric.
Born in Nigeria in 1990, the elements that now shape Nnorom’s contemporary practice have surrounded him since early childhood: sketching portraits of customers who visited his father’s shoe shop and playing with colourful scraps from his mother’s tailoring workshop crystallised his artistic vocation.
Nnorom’s body of work is typically constructed from pieces of Ankara/African wax print fabric scraps collected from tailors or cast-off clothing from homes, along with discarded foam from furniture workshops that are wrapped and stitched into bubbles of various colours and sizes. Through actions like sewing, rolling, tying, stringing, twisting, and suspending, he poetically navigates the boundaries between textile, painting, and sculpture.
Nnorom’s interest lies in the history, value, meaning, politics, consumption, power, and identity represented in the Dutch wax prints or African print fabric (Ankara) and the second-hand or used clothes (Okirika), which are predominantly consumed within his local community and West Africa. Fabrics evoke a sense of social structure or organisation that interlaces humanity into society; however, when referring to the “fabric of society” or “social fabric”, it is unique to different societies that inform his contemplation on socio-political structures, consumerism, industrialisation, and colonial remnants. These themes are sometimes expressed through metaphors such as bubble forms, bindle forms, lines of fabric strips, exploded bubbles, and tied clothes on architectural structures or canvases, and installation. Such expressions respond to our daily lives and struggles while fostering commonality and social connection. Thus, in Nnorom’s recent public installation, he explores using fishing and mosquito nets on a monumental scale to engage his audience and seeks to interrogate social, emotional, political, and economic challenges faced by migrants and displaced persons around the world.
Nnorom’s work has been recognised with several prestigious awards, including the Ettore e Ines Fico Prize at Artissima 2023 in Italy (co-winner), the 2023 Craft Council and Brookfield Properties Award in the UK (finalist), and the Cassirer Welz Award in South Africa in 2021 (first non-South African winner).
“We are happy to welcome Samuel Nnorom to Pearl Lam Galleries,” says Pearl Lam, Founder of Pearl Lam Galleries. “His innovative textile-based practice and poetic explorations of the boundaries between painting, sculpture, and craft make him a perfect fit for our program. We look forward to introducing his work to new audiences across Asia.”
About Samuel Nnorom
Samuel Nnorom discovered his artistic talent at the age of 9 while assisting his father at his shoe workshop. He started drawing customers who visited the shop while also being influenced by his mother’s tailoring workshop. From 2001 to 2008, he received art training at Johnny Art Production Studio, Jos, Nigeria. In 2018, he graduated from the University of Nigeria with a Master of Fine Arts (Sculpture). Since 2010, he has had numerous solo and group exhibitions at different galleries, museums, institutions, and fairs across Africa, Europe, Asia, and North America. In late 2024, his works will be presented by the Textile Museum of Canada. His works have been collected by Taguchi Collection, Tokyo, Japan; Fondazione Marino Golinelli, Bologna, Italy; Ettore Fico Museum, Turin, Italy; Fondation Gandur pour l’Art, Geneva, Switzerland; Anthony Davis Collections, Los Angeles, USA; and several important private collections in Europe, Australia, North America, South America, and Africa.
Samuel Nnorom b. 1990, Nigeria, Nothing to Prove, 2024, African wax print and cotton twine
194 x 257 x 30 cm (76 3/8 x 101 1/8 x 11 3/4 in.) Image courtesy of the artist and Pearl Lam Galleries