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Nengi Omuku Sees Value in Beauty During Times of Global Disruption

Her first institutional show in the U.S., "The Gathering," opens at the de Young Museum in June with works that meditate on collective care and the creation of new, more beautiful worlds.

In Nengi Omuku’s painting The Gathering, a wounded figure lays on a stretcher, the body dripping on what seems like shards of rubble surrounded by a gathering of figures with amorphous faces. A small hand is raised as though blessing the injured figure as it is transferred to safety. In the image, the crowd gradually withers the farther away from the scene.

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The work was inspired by the collapse of a building near the artist’s studio in the Onikan neighborhood of Lagos Island. “That is a picture of humanity, and where we should be as individuals,” the artist told Observer. “It was just the people that gathered, pulling people out of the rubble. There was nobody from the government to help. So this piece for me is about compassion and about sharing grief.”

This June, at the de Young Museum in San........

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