Diana Ejaita Italy/Nigeria, b. 1985

Overview

Diana ejaita is a Nigerian-Italian artist who explores cultural identity through the condition of migration, shaped by movement between histories, geographies, and inherited forms.

Working across painting, drawing, sculpture, and print-based installation, her work draws from West African literature, oral storytelling, and textile traditions, translating these sources into a refined visual language of distilled figures, symbolic objects, and expansive negative space. Central to her practice is the idea of the nature morte (still life) or “visual prayers”, which she reimagines as an active assemblage of cultural symbols, motifs, and natural forms in densely layered compositions. Recurring elements such as cow horns, plants, shells, the body, circles, crowns, and natural fibers serve as metaphors for strength and interconnectedness.

Alongside her fine art practice, Diana Ejaita is internationally recognized for her illustration work. She has created ten covers for The New Yorker, received the New York Times/New York Public Library Best Illustrated Children’s Book Award in 2025, and has been commissioned by leading brands including Comme des Garçons and H&M, reflecting a practice that moves fluidly between contemporary art, publishing, and design.

Biography

Photo: Agustin Farias

“The themes that drive me are connected to Africa, my roots, race, black empowerment, animism and historical heritage, cultural loss through colonialism and migration, discrimination, religious control and cultural appropriation.”

- Diana Ejaita

Diana Ejaita studied fine art in France and Germany before working as an illustrator and designer. Ejaita’s illustrations have been featured on ten covers of The New Yorker. Her work has been featured in numerous international publications, including The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Economist, Vogue, Financial Times and Monopol.

Ejaita was a fellow of Villa Romana Prize in 2023 and has published 8 children books (2021-2025). In 2025, Ejaita won New York Times/New York Public Library Best Illustrated Children’s Book Award for her book, Making Art. Her most recent solo exhibition, Exercises in Liberation, was held at kó in Lagos, following her artist residency with the gallery in August 2025, and her work was featured at kó’s presentation at Art X Lagos in November 2025. Her solo exhibition, Onajite, l’Attesa, was held at Galerie Wedding in Berlin in 2024. Other recent exhibitions include Afro Futures: Fashion – Hair – Design at Berlin’s Kunstgewerbemuseum (Museum of Decorative Arts); the Zurich Design Biennale; Concrete Limbo at Haus der Statistik (Berlin); the third edition of Miic (International Exhibition of Contemporary Illustration) in Galicia, Spain; and exhibitions at the University of Bielefeld (Germany), Kunst Gewerbe Museum (Berlin), and Appear (Hamburg). Her work has been commissioned by corporate bodies such as Google, Apple, Comme des Garcons, H&M, and Coca Cola Nigeria.

Works