Chioma Ebinama USA, b. 1988
Chioma Ebinama makes figurative watercolors on paper to explore drawing and visual narrative as a meditative practice and tool for self-liberation.
Raised in the United States by Nigerian Christian immigrants, she is drawn to the aesthetic of formalized religion for its potential to celebrate inner life. As she seeks to create new mythologies for the African Diaspora, her work is influenced by a myriad of sources, from West African cosmology, to folk art of the global South, to the visual language of Western religion and Eastern spiritual traditions. Also prevalent is her reflection on gender and queer identities through a figurative language influenced by surrealism and Igbo culture. The collision of aesthetics is indicative of Ebinama’s nomadic life in recent years as she breathes the air of Mexico, South Korea, India, Malaysia, and now Greece.
Ebinama has mounted solo exhibitions at Catinca Tabacaru (2018) and Fortnight Institute (2020) in New York City, at Boys’ Quarters Project Space in Port Harcourt, Nigeria (2019), and The Breeder in Athens, Greece (2020). She is also in the process of illustrating a children’s book written by Kevin Young, poetry editor of The New Yorker and former Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, with Make Me A World, an imprint of Random House books curated by Christopher Myers.
