Ozioma Onuzulike

OZIOMA ONUZULIKE WAS BORN IN 1972 IN ACHI, ENUGU STATE, NIGERIA. HE LIVES AND WORKS IN NSUKKA WHERE HE TEACHES CERAMIC ART AND AFRICAN ART AND DESIGN HISTORY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NIGERIA. 

Onuzulike graduated from the department of Fine and Applied Arts at the University of Nigeria. He is also a fellow of the Civitella Ranieri Centre, Umbertide, Perugia, Italy, where he undertook a residency under the UNESCO-ASCHBERG Bursary for Artists, and is an alumni of the prestigious Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine, USA. 

A ceramic artist and poet, Onuzulike's work largely focuses on the historical and sociological roots of the political and socio-economic turmoil in Africa and their debilitating effects on daily living on the continent. He often explores the aesthetic, symbolic and metaphorical nature of clay (his basic material) and the clay-working processes – pounding, crushing, hammering, wedging, grinding, cutting, pinching, punching, perforating, burning, firing – in his making of the multiple units that characterise his mixed-media projects. 

The artist had an institutional solo exhibition: at the Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA), Lagos, Nigeria, in 2019, along with a presentation of his poetry collection of the same title, also published by the CCA. Onuzulike’s works were included in the Entanglements: Colonial Collections in Decolonial Times exhibition held at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge. His work has also been featured in international art fairs such as The Armory Show in New York, 1-54 London, artgenève and Art Brussels.