Nengi Omuku’s The Gathering, A Reflective Encounter by Wanda Sabir

 

Nengi Omuku’s The Gathering
A Reflective Encounter

By Wanda Sabir

Nengi Omuku, 2024. Photo: Todd-White Art Photography.

I attended the conversation between Nengi Omuku and curator Natasha Becker virtually. Traffic was prohibitive again crossing the Bay Bridge, but Sunday I got out and was able to spend over an hour in the African Art Gallery with Nengi Omuku’s work.

I enjoyed its conversation with the antiquities. It was like an embrace. Her work centered, the larger elders embraced her.

Nengi Omuku, Gathering, 2020. Oil on sanyan. Collection of spaghetti western, Michael Sherman and Vinny Dotolo.

As I walked through the gallery, I could hear the conversation between Nengi and Natasha playing. Their voices become a soundtrack before you even reach the place where you can sit down and watch the interview.

Musical...

Film: How artist Nengi Omuku paints new worlds

Omuku’s paintings rested among centuries of African sculpture and ceremonial objects. It could have felt like an interruption—a contemporary artist inserted into a historical collection. Instead, it felt like an embrace. The galleries became less a museum than a family reunion.

Yorùbá maker, Pàkà egúngún (ceremonial dance garment), 1930–1970. Cotton, synthetic fibers, vinyl, wood, printed cloth, patchwork, appliqué, embroidery, mirrors, amulets, coins and shell buttons. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

There are several rooms partitioned with Nengi's work and glass panes we can see through to the other sides of the very large and spacious open except where noted room. It is as if the centuries and the dispersed African Diaspora once again gather here to recollect old times.

Nigerian artist Nengi Omuku’s first solo US exhibition, Nengi Omuku: The Gathering, opened at the de Young museum June 27, 2026 and will be up through May 14, 2027.

Omuku’s work is historically and philosophically layered. Using a classical medium as canvas, sanyan, the artist incorporates folk art into a fine arts medium.

Sanyan is cloth traditionally woven from silk and cotton which was used for ceremonial clothing. Omuku first repurposed clothing made from sanyan. Now she employs weavers who make the cloth which the artist has treated so it can hold the oil paints she favors.

Asante weaver, Kente (man’s wrapper), 20th century. Cotton, strip weaving and supplementary weft patterning. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

In a lovely filmed interview, patrons see Omuku paint wearing gloves as she alternately smiles into the camera as she shares how she met the weavers.

Unhurried one feels a deep inhale as the paintings hanging from the ceiling invite speculation.

The cloth has a sculptural presence. Figures emerge from lush gardens and dream landscapes where memory is less an act of recollection than a way of being.

Nengi Omuku, 2024. Photo: Todd-White Art Photography.

I resonated personally with the artist and her work and the vision of curator Natasha Becker in placing contemporary artists in conversation with these antiquities. I hadn't known until the talk that she is also a Black woman. I have enjoyed all her collaborations. I think I have seen them all.

I loved hearing the curator speak of her time with Nengi Omuku at home. Nengi is a diaspora African returned home changed. She has a vision. I also love it that she grew up in a home with a garden and a gardener.

Omuku spoke about her work with patients and caregivers in mental health institutions in Nigeria. She understands that painting can be more than representation. Creative tools are how we heal and recover.

She also spoke about growing up in a home where her mother was a horticulturist. After graduate school, she returned home and worked in the family business. Gardens were not simply places of beauty. They were places of work, learning, and livelihood.

In Nigeria, sculpture is everywhere. As one sits at a traffic circle there is a bust on the center island. As you drive down the street, you see monuments in city parks. Guys sitting around a table talking—ordinary, right? It's just they are forever stone.

It is the African Art Gallery in real time.

For real origin stories.

Baga artist, Nimba mask, early 20th century, Guinea. Wood. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

Omuku said she first imagined herself as a sculptor before one of her teachers encouraged her to pursue painting. Her paintings still possess a sculptural presence. Painted on handwoven sanyan, the canvas has the quiet authority of sculpture. Woven and then sewn in strips, the fabric has holes so bodies can breathe in the African heat. The cloth is not simply a surface. It is a stitched narrative.

Horticulture adds another layer of meaning.

I recognized the landscape she paints, not because I had seen these exact gardens before, but because I have walked parts of the world that nourish them. I have traveled through Lagos, Benin City, Ile-Ife, Abeokuta, Oshogbo, the Osun Grove, and Badagry. My own ancestral journey has led me across Nigeria in search of stories and homecomings.

I wasn't able to travel to northern Nigeria as I knew no one there. I have Yoruba and Fulani ancestry from Northern Nigeria. I wanted to see my heritage sites (smile).

So many philosophical resonances with the Monet in Venice and the Botanical Gardens nearby and the lush landscape that is Golden Gate Park where Lift Every Voice is proclaimed in neon just across the street at the Spreckels Temple of Music (smile).

Remember the 350 African Women Ancestors, dana king’s work?

I was the person who organized the procession and poured libations. I also built the altars, organized the choirs, and hired the women drummers. It was the first Freedom Day in SF. Mayor London Breed officiated.

What a day!

I am interested in art for Social Change and artists as change agents. I think creative tools are how we heal and recover. I appreciate that aspect of Nengi’s work.

Memory is a story we tell ourselves. Sometimes those stories are imported. Sometimes those stories are untrue. Sometimes we need a reset.

The Gathering, oil on the ancestral cloth sanyan, is this reset conversation. The stories are a collective rememory. It is more than recollection and then again it is a collection or opportunity to pause and reflect.

Nengi Omuku, New Haven, 2025. Oil on sanyan. Courtesy of the artist and Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery.

Nengi Omuku, Fire for Fire, 2025. Oil on sanyan. Courtesy of the artist and Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London.

As we wait for pandemics to quiet and for petrol to fill yellow buckets 🪣 and fires to quiet and rages to simmer...there they wait in the eternal gardens.

We missed the turn over there, down the road, turned left at the pasture. Circling back now—the signs are missing. We forgot the tune. Mothers stopped humming.

Hum.

Storytime.

Nengi Omuku’s The Gathering is storytime. If you're lost, pull up a chair and listen.

If You Go

Nengi Omuku: The Gathering — de Young museum, Golden Gate Park, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, San Francisco. Through May 14, 2027. Museum hours: Tuesday–Sunday, 9:30 a.m.–5:15 p.m.

Tickets and visitor information: de Young tickets

Ticketing and general inquiries: 888-901-6645 (24/7) or 800-777-9996 (daily, 9 a.m.–9 p.m.).

Artwork identifications and interpretive information: de Young / Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco exhibition labels and wall text supplied for Nengi Omuku: The Gathering.