CHIDINMA NNOLI

Chidinma Nnoli (b. 1998, Enugu) is an artist working primarily with painting. Through a practice largely shaped by constant conflict with self and a background saturated with religion and gendered obligations, Nnoli questions the tension between fate and free will, not only as lived experiences but also as recurring formal challenges within the act of painting.

By treating the canvas as a living surface that can resist, absorb, betray, or interrupt her intention, her work becomes a site where agency is unstable, both for the subjects and herself as the artist.
Whether through a sudden visual rupture or a hazy, dissolving atmosphere, Nnolicreates passages that move from subject to space, space to spirit, and spirit to history. Evoking what can most deeply be felt as intense, poetic, and balanced, even in its continuous state of becoming.

Nnoli earned her BFA from the University of Benin, Nigeria, and is currently pursuing an MFA in Painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Selected shows include two solo exhibitions: When Will My Feet Catch Fire? (2022), Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York, and Not All Who Wander Are Lost (Wanderlust) (2021), Rele Gallery. Other solo presentations include To Wander Untamed (2021), Rele Gallery, at The Armory Show, New York.

She has also participated in several group exhibitions, including Last Night I Dreamt of Manderley, Alison Jacques Gallery, London (2024); “Pictures Girls Make”: Portraiture Through the Lens of Progress, Blum & Poe, Los Angeles (2023); Femme Noir: Artists, Muses, and Freedoms, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle (2023); Where the Wild Roses Grow, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, Berlin (2023); The Invincible Hands, Shyllon Museum,Lagos (2023); Orita Meta, Rele Gallery, Los Angeles (2021); and In Situ, Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York (2021).

Notable residencies include Fores Projects, London (2024); Ox-Bow School of Art, Michigan (2023); Atlantic Center for the Arts Residency, Florida (2023); and Rele Art Foundation Residency, Ekiti, Nigeria (2019)

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