About
Who is Samuel Nnorom?
Biography
Samuel Nnorom (b. 1990, Nigeria). He 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. His body of work is typically constructed from pieces of Ankara/African print fabric scraps collected from tailors or cast-off clothing from homes, along with discarded foam and fibres from furniture workshops that are wrapped and stitched into bubbles of various colours and sizes. Through actions like sewing, rolling, tying, stringing, and suspending, he poetically navigates the boundaries between textile, painting, and sculpture. He holds an MFA in sculpture from the prestigious University of Nigeria and belongs to the New Nsukka School of Art.
Nnorom has won several national and international art prizes, which include, ex aequo the Ettore e Ines Fico Prize at the Artissima Fair Italy 2023, Global Prize winner, Art for Change, Saatchi Gallery London UK 2022, Strauss & Co and Cassirer Welz Award, South Africa 2021. He has exhibited in several solo and important group shows with galleries and art fairs in Africa, Europe, America and Asia. He has an institutional and a Museum solo exhibition with Saatchi Gallery London and Textile Museum of Canada respectively in 2024. He had prestigious residencies with important institutions such as Black Rock Senegal 2023/2024, BISO Ouagadougou Burkina-Faso 2023, Guest Artist Space (GAS) Yinka Shonibare Foundation Residency Nigeria 2023, Royal Overseas League and Art House Residency London 2023, Bag Factory residency South Africa 2022. He has gained recognition in several collections, like; the Taguchi Collection, Anthony David Collections, Fondazione Marino Golinelli Collection, Ettore Fico Museum, Fondation Gandur pour l’Art, and Blachere Fondation.
Thus, in Nnorom’s recent public installation, he explores using fishing and mosquito nets on a monumental scale that engages his audience seeking to interrogate social, emotional, political, and economic challenges faced by migrants and displaced persons around the world.
Artist Statement
My interest lies in the history, value, meaning, politics, consumption, power, and identity represented on the Dutch wax prints or African print fabric (Ankara) and the second-hand or used clothes (Okirika), which are predominantly consumed within my 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 my contemplation on socio-political structures, consumerism, industrialization, 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 using techniques such as cutting, rolling, stitching, tying, and installation. Such expressions respond to our daily lives and struggles while fostering commonality and social connection.
I hope for my works to inspire endless possibilities in the minds of audiences by promoting self-interrogation and critical thinking while appreciating artistry at its finest.