Painting patterned fabrics: the art of Tonia Nneji
Inside the walls of Berlin's Kristin Hjellegjerde are large portraits of women in different moods. A woman is sitting on a stool with hands clenched together and a saddened face. Another is standing with a dress falling loosely off her shoulders. A painting captures 3 women sitting together with their legs crossed and body language too playful to assume they’re in an interesting conversation. But in all of this, one thing sums these paintings– the fabrics, and the clothes these women wear are colourful and perhaps styled with a very small piece of fabric decorated with printed images of unseen people— this is the oeuvre of the Nigerian artist Tonia Nneji whose works usually confronts the relationship between trauma and the female body, addressing issues of sexual harassment, the culture of silencing women and the emotional and mental wellbeing of the feminine.
Born in Lagos, Nigeria to a line of traditional carvers and masquerade carriers, Nneji commemorates these long-lived practices with her approach to textile cultures, celebrating the importance of fabric and its cultural meanings in African societies, especially from her Indigenous Igbo tribe where fabric is seen as a celebratory item. All of her characters are clothed in this specific fabric: usually plain cotton with printed images of men or catholic saints or of church symbols and typically worn for religious functions.
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Image: Whatever Brings Light, 2024, Oil on canvas, 165 x 136 cm, 65 x 53 1/2 in. Image above: Tonia Nneji, A Gathering of Broken Hearted, 2022, Acrylic and oil on canvas, 60 x 72 in, 152.4 x 182.9 cm. Copyright of the artist.
Born in Lagos, Nigeria to a line of traditional carvers and masquerade carriers, Nneji commemorates these long-lived practices with her approach to textile cultures, celebrating the importance of fabric and its cultural meanings in African societies, especially from her Indigenous Igbo tribe where fabric is seen as a celebratory item. All of her characters are clothed in this specific fabric: usually plain cotton with printed images of men or catholic saints or of church symbols and typically worn for religious functions.
Want to read more of this article?
We are proud to be a subscriber-funded publication with members in 185 countries. We know our readership is passionate about textiles, so we invite you to help us preserve and promote the stories, memories, and histories that fabric holds. Your support allows us to publish our magazine, and also ‘what's on’ information, and subscription interviews, reviews, and long-read articles in our online blog.
ALREADY A SUBSCRIBER? CLICK HERE TO ACCESS CONTENT
OR...to continue reading….
*Magazine subscribers automatically get free access to all our online content. We send the access code by email with the publication of each issue. You will also find it on the envelope containing your magazine. Please note the access code changes every issue.*