Ozioma Onuzulike

Abstract Ozioma Onuzulike's Who Knows Tomorrow is the artist's second solo presentation the United States. As a professor of ceramics and African art history and director of the Institute of African Studies at the Department of Fine and Applied Arts, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Onuzulike's practice is intimately linked with Nigerian art histories and ongoing pedagogies of craft production, interpretation, and social use. The exhibition features eleven clay, palm kernel, and copper tapestries that merge ceramics, beadwork, and textiles, presenting multivalent modes of craft. The collection attests to a profound evolution from Onuzulike's practice of thrown and hand-built vessels to this current reflection on textilelike forms. Though modest in size, the gallery exhibition is impressive in the material and conceptual dimension of each work. Onuzulike's choice to take on the symbolism of traditional West African textiles associated with colonial exploitation situates these recent works with a practice that is as concerned with craft production as it is with politics.