Obodo describes his process as gestures of repairing wounds that history has left open and tying disparate parts together, both materially and symbolically. He believes that materials possess their own agency and capacity to speak, and by listening to his materials, Eva Obodo allows charcoal to narrate intertwined stories of exploitation, resilience, and hope.
AFIKARIS is pleased to present the first solo exhibition in Europe of Nigerian artist Eva Obodo. Born in Nigeria in 1963, Eva Obodo is a visual artist whose practice encompasses painting, sculpture, and mixed media. He lives and works in Nsukka, Nigeria. Holding both a Master’s degree and a PhD from the Department of Fine and Applied Arts at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Eva Obodo currently teaches sculpture and art education at the same institution.
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Eva Obodo is one of the artists whose long-term engagement with unconventional materials for sculpture has shaped the direction of contemporary art in Nigeria. Working primarily with charcoal, copper wires and aluminium, his work engages both the materiality of his chosen media and their potential as metaphors for addressing contemporary issues in Africa and the enduring legacies of extractive colonialism.
Through a labor-intensive process of tying and bundling charcoal, a material with chemical, physical, and symbolic affinities with coal, Obodo interrogates the history of mineral extraction in Africa. His works in this exhibition responds to the social and environmental consequences of extractive economies, including the exploitation of labor and the precarious conditions of contemporary living.
Obodo’s engagement with these themes is deeply personal. His father was a coal miner in Enugu, Eastern Nigeria, and survived the 1949 massacre of protesting miners by British colonial officers. This event catalyzed the independence movement in Nigeria and marked the gradual decline of coal mining in the region. To confront the environmental and social repercussions of this industry, Obodo employs charcoal bound with copper and aluminum wires. For instance, his work Pickman, featured in this exhibition, references not only miners in Enugu, but also other across Africa, who, under dangerous conditions, descend into the bowels of the earth to extract rare minerals that sustain global demand for fuel and digital conductors. Through such works, Obodo invites us to reflect on both the social and ecological toll of fossil fuels and rare-earth mineral extraction and the contemporary charcoal trade, with its attendant devastation caused by felling and burning of hardwood forests.
The meticulous, time-consuming nature of Obodo’s practice underscores the value of labor. In his relief sculptures, he experiments with the form and arrangement of charcoal, transforming the material into an expressive medium. To create these works, he gathers charcoal fragments, and with several assistants, sort them by size, meticulously wash away staining dust, and prepare them to transition from fuel sources to art material. These fragments are then methodically tied into vertical and horizontal patterns, while acrylics, colored aluminum wires and aluminum strips (fashioned from discarded beverage cans) punctuate the surface with color, creating monochromatic reliefs.
In the works presented in this exhibition, Obodo’s materials and studio process function as metaphors for the lived condition in Africa. He describes his process of stitching, wrapping, and tying as gestures of repairing wounds that history has left open and tying disparate parts together, both materially and symbolically. His approach transforms artistic labor into a meditative practice of restoration, reimagining how broken systems and fractured histories might be held together, even temporarily. He believes that materials possess their own agency and capacity to speak, and by listening to his materials, Obodo allows charcoal to narrate intertwined stories of exploitation, resilience, and hope.
The exhibition’s title, And We Hired a Carpenter to Patch the Cloth, crystallizes this philosophy. It evokes the improvisation and irony that define both African social realities and Obodo’s aesthetic language. The absurdity of a carpenter repairing damaged garments reflects the absurdity of systems that no longer function as intended, yet also the ingenuity of those who persist in repairing them.
Across his works, this metaphor of repair acknowledges that healing in postcolonial societies is often achieved through imperfect acts of care—patching and suturing. His Rush Hour, a dense composition of a cityscape, visualizes the entangled energy of urban life and its relentless drive to “fix” things, even as new complications emerge, reflecting the popular Nigerian urban parlance – “We dey patch am.” Obodo’s wrapping of some charcoal fragments like presents also extends this symbolic vocabulary. The gesture of wrapping implies preservation and concealment, inviting questions about value and exchange. Through his processes, Obodo reconfigures materials associated with destruction into sites of contemplation and rebirth.
A glance at the evolution of Obodo’s practice reveals an artist continually pushing the boundaries of his medium. His current exploration of charcoal began in 2008 and has developed significantly since then. His artistic practice first started with metal and concrete sculptures, later shifting to wood fragments, often engraved with motifs or text, laying the foundation for his ongoing exploration of charcoal.
The trajectory of his practice can be traced to the decades-long experimentation among artists of the Nsukka School, a group formed at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, where he is now a professor of sculpture. Rooted in the postcolonial modernist philosophy of Natural Synthesis, this artistic lineage, including artists like Uche Okeke, Obiora Udechukwu and El Anatsui, bridges 20th century postcolonial modernist art and 21st century contemporary art in Africa. Obodo’s own practice continues this legacy of transformation, demonstrating how the language of materials can articulate histories of exploitation and survival.
Iheanyi Onwuegbucha
Art Historian and Independent Curator
