Ozioma Onuzulike

A ceramics artist, renowned poet and historian of African art, Ozioma Onuzulike’s practice largely focuses on the historical and sociological roots of the political and socio-economic turmoil in Africa and their effects on daily life. He works with materials found in Africa – primarily clay, but also using yam tubers, palm kernel shells and honeycombs – considering the aesthetic and conceptual potentials of these natural resources. 

Onuzulike was born in 1972 in Achi, Enugu State, Nigeria. He graduated from the Department of Fine and Applied Arts, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, where he is currently a Professor and Director of the University’s Institute of African Studies. He was the 2010 Leventis Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of London Centre of African Studies, SOAS, and in 2011 received the African Humanities Postdoctoral Fellowship Award of the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). Onuzulike is a fellow of the Civitella Ranieri Centre, Perugia, Italy. Onuzulike has exhibited internationally, with a solo exhibition at the Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA), Lagos, Nigeria, in 2019, and work included in an exhibition held at the Museum of Archeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge. His work is held in numerous institutional collections, including the Yemisi Shyllon Museum of Art, Lagos, Nigeria; Museum of Archeology and Anthropology, Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK; Princeton University Museum, Princeton, New Jersey, USA; The Design Museum, Munich, Germany; Hudson Valley Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, USA, among others.

Onuzulike lives and works in Lagos.