Kindred 2024

Kindred captures historical identification in Igbo culture through uniformity in clothing styles during ceremonies. Ceremonies like burial rites, passage of rites and naming ceremony. These harmonious clothes segregation is in tune with Nsukka idiomatic expressions and dialects 'egbu kpo ola-na Oyo'. Which means that when the town cryer sounds the gorge, then various family members meet differently before conveying to the village square.

However, these occasional identifications through uniforms occur mostly during burial rites and the impermanence of the moments is captured through still and motion documentaries.

Thus, subsequent generations, by observation and reviewing the archival collections, can connect with the past generations and share in their memories.

Having embodied vases as individual vessels in human form (humanoid) -between metaphor and fable, the vases are commentaries on personal experiences.

An eye for an eye 2025

This boarders between equality in strength of character.

Note: The text above was written by the Artist. No modification was made by COCA.

Ngozi-Omeje Ezema

Nigeria

https://ngoziomejea@blogspot.com

Ngozi-Omeje Ezema trained as a ceramic artist at the Department of Fine and Applied Arts, University of Nigeria, Nsukka. For the past decade, she has combined art teaching with studio practice. Her first solo exhibition, Connecting Deep, was held at Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA) Lagos in 2018. In 2019, she won the High Excellence Award at the Cheongju International Craft Biennale in South Korea. Ngozi-Omeje has participated in several artist residencies – Jos, Ghana, Seattle, Lagos, Burkina Faso, and Tunisia. While as part of the “Main" of the 14th biennial of the Dak'art, her solo show of ceramic installations is part of the Dak'art OFF programme, titled ‘The Fire Made Me’, 2022 at The Third, Dakar.
Currently, a continuation of her “Boundless Vases”, a solo exhibition held in Kó Gallery Lagos, Ngozi-Omeje pushes the boundaries, sizes and spaces vases could occupy in the Pinakothek die Moderne’s Rotunda, Munich Germany. Invariably, a response to female status and womanhood.