Rising Painter Nengi Omuku Dreams of Utopia Through Painting https://ift.tt/JkD1ryG

For many years, the artist Nengi Omuku believed that her artworks were hopeful conjurings of a yet-unrealized world, her personal utopias. “I thought I was dreaming of a future,” she recently said on a video call from her studio.

The artist, who splits her time between London and Lagos, creates ecstatic, colorful oil paintings on sanyan, a traditional, pre-colonial Yoruba textile found in Nigeria. She has risen through the art world over the past decade with her spectacular scenes, which present abstracted figures in an Edenic natural world. These visions propose moments of reconciliation, community gathering, and natural beauty following years of international turmoil.

Omuku paints onto strips of gessoed sanyan, the finished works hanging from wooden dowels, like banners that move in the air. Her paintings have earned acclaim with presentations at The Armory Show and 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, along with solo shows at Kasmin, New York (2024), and Hastings Contemporary and Arnolfini in the U.K. (2023–24). In 2025, she joined the inaugural Artist Council of the Museum of West African Art, Benin City, Nigeria.

Lately, however, Omuku has started to understand her work differently. Earlier this summer, she opened “The Gathering” at the de Young Museum in San Francisco—her first solo museum exhibition in the U.S. The exhibition, curated by Natasha Becker and on view through May 14, 2028, brings together eight oil paintings made over the past six years. Omuku’s works are installed within the museum’s African art gallery, as part of an ongoing exhibition series focused on cross-generational juxtapositions.

Omuku’s paintings appear alongside 19th-century guardian reliquary sculptures from the Obamba people, 20th-century Asante Kente cloths (historically worn by royalty), and ceremonial masks and costumes. For Omuku, seeing her own works alongside centuries-old artworks and objects has been eye-opening.

“Seeing the historical sculptures in the space, I felt like some sort of ancestral knowledge that had been passed down without me knowing,” said Omuku. “It felt like a kind of remembering that I was not conscious of.”

Omuku was caught off guard by her reaction. “It wasn’t until this show that I started thinking about my works as ancestral memory,” she said. “Grappling with the concept of memory was, on some level, scary for me, but very real. When I walked into the room, there was a kind of conversation. It felt like there was a communion that Natasha [Becker] had orchestrated for the work to come and meet each other.”

In recent years, amid a period of global tumult, she had been struggling to understand the significance of her work in the world. Her paintings suggest nature as a site of reprieve and place of beauty. Florals, inspired by the artist’s mother’s work as a florist and gardener, factor heavily into her works, with figures often dwarfed by botanicals.

“For a long time, I thought, what right do I have as a Black African woman making work today and painting flowers? I felt there was much more that’s pressing to be discussed,” she said. “Now I see my work through a different lens. I’m trusting myself a bit more, now knowing that while it still goes back to nature, it also goes back further than my own consciousness.”

Omuku’s material choices have been changing alongside her shifting conceptual framework. Some of the more recent works in the exhibition, made in 2025, use newly woven sanyan fabric, commissioned by sewing weavers the artist found in the Middle Belt of Nigeria. Previously, the artist had worked almost exclusively with vintage sanyan repurposed from dresses and other articles of clothing. For instance, a few works in the show are painted on sanyan taken from vintage wrap skirts. The shift to newly woven sanyan has liberated her painting from the confines of bodily scale.

The largest painting in the show, New Haven (2025), is made on new sanyan, and the work marks new territory for the artist, who found herself able to “go beyond and start dreaming even more through painting.” In the composition, an apocalyptic-looking, multicolored sky looms above a sprawling landscape. Plants tower over figures, with yellow fuel cans scattered about. The image is inspired by a collage of press photographs of people queuing for fuel in Lagos, where scarcities are common though the nation produces oil. “I wanted to create this landscape where these people have walked into this very strange space and have left jerry cans behind,” said Omuku. “They’re leaving their woes behind and wandering into this new space, but it’s also flat and unreal, from a dream.”

As in this work, Omuku’s works sometimes reimagine scenes from contemporary Lagos in aspirational ways. She sees herself moving further into this dream world. Lately, she’s embraced bright, layered colors and an approach she describes as almost pointillist. Her process is meditative. “I realized that as an artist, I actually have to first take care of myself and my mind through the process of making art, for it to truly be effective,” she said, “and for people to truly feel the things that I’m trying to say.”

A growing part of her practice happens outside the studio, in community building. In 2019, she founded The Art of Healing, a charity that supports mental well-being for Nigerians.

“We install art in intensive-care psychiatric wards, and we do workshops every month as well, as a form of therapy,” the artist explained. “I realized I had been overburdening my paintings with the task of healing the world. Extracting this part from my practice and having it be a real-world application solved that problem for me and allowed my painting to have its own autonomy and exist however it chooses to materialize.”

Now, the artist is leaning into her instincts as she prepares for two more upcoming U.S. museum shows: an exhibition of figurative works, “There We Sat Down,” at the SCAD Museum of Art in Savannah, Georgia, and an exhibition at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle rooted entirely in landscape.

With one show looking back at the figures she painted before, and one pressing further into the dreamed-up worlds she paints now, Omuku is testing her ability to innovate and honor cultural memory all at once.

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Nieves González, painter of Lily Allen’s “West End Girl” to mount first museum show in China. https://ift.tt/O5DIrxQ

Spanish painter Nieves González will present a solo exhibition at Contemporary Gallery Kunming (CGK) in Yunnan, China, opening in November 2027.

Consisting of 25 new works and presented by Beijing’s HdM Gallery, the show marks González's first solo institutional presentation, extending a practice that has attracted rapid international attention over the past year.

González came to widespread public notice in March 2026, when her oil painting West End Girl(2025)—a portrait of singer Lily Allen, commissioned by Allen and used as the cover of her album of the same name—reached wider public attention. Earlier this year, the painting was unveiled at London's National Portrait Gallery, where it is currently on view. Depicting Allen seated against a dark background in a pale blue polka-dot puffer jacket, the work brought González’s signature treatment of clothing as both formal structure and psychological marker to one of the world's most prominent portrait collections.

Alumbra, 2025
Nieves González
HdM GALLERY

hat treatment is central to her broader practice. Working within—and against—the Western pictorial tradition, González places women at the center of compositions that draw their visual grammar from Jusepe de Ribera, Francisco de Zurbarán, and Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, while deliberately rewriting those masters’ premises. Her figures, often depicted head-on and with quiet intensity, wear modern garments—like coats, jackets, scarves—that carry as much pictorial weight as the faces they frame. The sacred, in her paintings, migrates from institutional holiness to the contemporary everyday.

Born in Huelva, Spain, and based in Granada, González studied fine arts and holds a master’s degree in Art: Idea and Production from the University of Seville. She is represented by HdM Gallery and Richard Heller Gallery in Los Angeles. CGK, a leading nonprofit institution in southwest China, fosters exchange between Yunnan—a region connecting China with Southeast and South Asia—and the international art world. Previous artists to have exhibitions at CGK include Ding Yi and Marc Riboud.

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Rare Bernini painting discovered in Vienna museum storeroom ahead of major exhibition. https://ift.tt/gRlbi80

A new painting by Renaissance master Gian Lorenzo Bernini has been discovered and will be unveiled in December at Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum, according to The Art Newspaper.

The painting, titled Portrait of an Old Man, a nearly life-size depiction of an elderly man with disheveled white hair and an intense, direct gaze, had been attributed to an anonymous 17th-century Roman artist and was moved into storage in 1989 for lack of a firm attribution. Bernini, primarily known as a sculptor and architect, never signed his paintings, and fewer than 20 are widely accepted as authentic.

The portrait entered the museum‘s collection in 1920 as a work attributed to Philippe de Champaigne, bequeathed by Viennese collector Richard Lieben, who had purchased it in 1900; nothing is known of its earlier provenance. Over the following century it was reattributed multiple times, to an anonymous Italian painter, to the French artists de Champaigne or Jean Jouvenet, to the Flemish artists Jacob Ferdinand Voet or Erasmus Quellinus the Younger, and more recently to Bernini‘s collaborator Baciccio.

Kunsthistorisches Museum curator Gudrun Swoboda now argues the work is Bernini‘s, dating it to around 1670 based on the sitter‘s clothing, collar, and hairstyle, which reflect Roman fashions of the period.

She points to the painting‘s sense of space and anatomical precision, along with parallels to Bernini‘s bust of Louis XIV, particularly around the mouth. Swoboda describes the paint handling in the face as sculptural, “building up and modelling a face in clay” with short, bristled brushstrokes, and sees further stylistic echoes in a Bernini self-portrait drawing in the U.K.’s Royal Collection dated 1675–80.

She believes the finely painted head and collar are Bernini’s work, while the more weakly rendered black garment and shoulder were completed by another hand, possibly one of his sons—a division a recent scientific examination has corroborated. Swoboda speculates the sitter may be Mario Chigi, a brother of Pope Alexander VII and Bernini’s most important late patron.

The attribution is contentious in part because Bernini is generally thought to have stopped painting around 1650, two decades before the Vienna work’s proposed date. Of the roughly 16 paintings currently accepted as his, only one dates from after 1640. If confirmed, the new attribution would substantially revise the timeline of Bernini‘s painting career.

Portrait of an Old Man will anchor “Bernini: Painter and Sculptor” at Vienna‘s Palais Lobkowitz, running December 2nd through April 4th, 2027, alongside loans including the Uffizi’s Bernini self-portrait and the Royal Collection drawing.

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5 New Restaurants in New York Where the Art Is as Impressive as the Food https://ift.tt/0qPTf6M

The worlds of food and art are colliding in New York City. In the past year, a handful of restaurants have opened with impressive culinary offerings that parallel the artwork inside.

While some are associated with art organizations such as Sotheby’s and the New Museum, others get their creative flair from the owners’ taste. The topic is becoming the talk of the town, including in Artnet’s recent podcast, The Art Angle, which features Annie Armstrong, food and culture writer for Caper Media. And it’s not just the art world that is creating buzz. Reviews in major outlets are also driving diners to these new artful haunts.

Whether you’re refueling after a museum visit or fancy your appetizers with a side of art, here are five of the best new restaurants in New York with art collections that are guaranteed to satisfy as much as the fare.

Oriana

174 Mott Street

What to see:

Tribeca gallerygoers, your new go-to restaurant is here. A short walk away to Nolita is Oriana, the latest spot from fine-dining institution Eleven Madison Park alumni chef Andy Quinn and sommelier Cedric Nicaise, who together also launched Noortwyck in the West Village in 2022. Dark browns fill Oriana’s stunning space designed by local architecture firm Modellus Novus, and are warmed by a wood-fired grill.

Artworks from the restaurant’s financier and building owner Kevin Ryan’s collection fill the walls, including pieces by Rashid Johnson, Alteronce Gumby, and Ming Smith. But the stunner is a site-specific mural by Tunji Adeniyi-Jones featuring the British artist’s characteristic vibrant palette with swirls of lush flora and fauna that draw from his Yoruba heritage. The rich blues and orange hues span 25 feet in the multi-panel work, gracing the large dining room with thrilling energy.

“We wanted the interiors of Oriana to reflect the deep artistic history and spirit of downtown New York by filling the walls with visual artists who inspire us as well as our guests,” said Christopher Omachi, who advised on the restaurant’s collection. “We knew Adeniyi-Jones’s paintings wouldn’t fade into the background—they bring a sense of depth, movement, and life to the restaurant, beckoning people in from the street and inviting conversation amongst guests.”

What to eat:

Adeniyi-Jones’s mural sets a spirited tone that is matched by the energy of the room. The menu centers around live-fire and open-grill dishes, with chic diners indulging in rich dishes like perfectly cooked hanger steak and smoky, roasted vegetables, as well as lighter fare like briny oysters and silky tuna crudo.

A highlight is the wood-fired salmon over a smoked butter sauce that pairs perfectly with maitake mushrooms. Each dish is packed with flavors and fresh ingredients like ramps and basil that add brightness to both the plate and the palate.

Oberon, New Museum

235 Bowery

What to see:

With the sleek design by architectural firm OMA and partner Shohei Shigematsu, it’s no surprise that Oberon inside the New Museum is stylistically impressive. Bathed in warm browns, including cork booths encircling the walls and a low, curved ceiling, Oberon feels like the inside of a cave or a coffee bean, a contrast to the metal surfaces throughout the museum.

Above the bar is an agentic AI digital installation by Ian Cheng that responds to the activity of the room. Diners can also play a game of virtual chess while sitting at the sculptural bar top, which was designed by artist Minjae Kim, who also created some of the cozy tables and resin-dipped fiberglass artworks floating over the booths. After dinner, guests receive chocolates with poems by Laurie Anderson.

“While we're an independent business with an independent entrance, we're still in and of the museum and its community. We wanted the entire space to reflect the community, which is by and for artists, and to feel creative rather than be a gallery,” said Henry Rich, managing partner of Oberon.

“Everything is meant to be integrated into the experience, not too distracting, and with an artist’s sensibility more than the discrete pieces you might see in the museum. This way people can tune into the art or just enjoy the experience.”

What to eat:

Oberon has refreshingly reasonable prices and an approachable menu of seasonal modern American fare, with staples like a burger and fettuccine, as well as dorade bursting with flavorful romesco and summer squash. A highlight was a generous serving of prawns with a zippy blend of salsa negra, jalapeño, and cilantro, which pairs perfectly with the bright dressing of coconut yuzu on the watercress salad.

Oberon’s audience isn’t just museumgoers. While the New Museum closes at 6 p.m., the restaurant stays open until 1 a.m., an enticing invitation to have a glass of wine while playing AI chess late into the night.

Bar Chimera

550 Madison Avenue

What to see:

Inside legendary architect Philip Johnson’s postmodern masterpiece (the former AT&T building), restaurateur Simon Kim has assembled a spectacle to match the building’s scale. Bar Chimera is the latest addition to Kim’s Gracious Hospitality portfolio, which includes Michelin-starred Korean steakhouse COTE.

Bar Chimera is three bars in one: martini, whiskey, and wine. Designed by the Rockwell Group, the room is carefully divided into distinct zones, from the gleaming chrome martini counter to the wood-paneled whiskey library and convivial wine bar. London-based artist Martin Creed’s neon signs, commissioned by ARTLINE, hover on the walls.

“We felt that Creed’s ability to bring people together aligned seamlessly with the values of 550 Madison: hospitality, community, and positivity,” said Ji Park Kwak and Rosa Suehyun Kim, the founders and directors of public art consultancy ARTLINE. “In striving to realize an artistically meaningful and innovative art program that stands apart from the typical large corporate midtown landscape, we were drawn to the sophisticated playfulness and embracing openness of Martin’s work.”

The artworks’ glowing text, like a yellow sign that reads “Don’t Worry,” are lighthearted statements visible from the street and throughout the grandiose space.

“We wanted Bar Chimera to feel like a sort of zen resting spot within the intensity of Midtown,” added Simon Kim. “The inspiration for the space came in part from ancient cities like Rome, where you might find a fountain just outside a busy merchant area, giving people a place to pause and rest after a bustling day.”

What to eat:

The drinks program is a suitably extensive highlight. The martini is the star, with ice made from filtered and re-mineralized water and a choice of garnishes ranging from pickled onions to blue-cheese-stuffed olives.

The menu here is a combination of New York brasserie classics and elevated bar snacks with Korean American flourishes. A perfect option for indecisive diners or people who like to try multiple dishes is the brilliant preset menu with seven small appetizers like red snapper crudo and wagyu bresaola with melon to accompany your choice of an entree.

The burger comes with peppercorn mustard and a brioche bun (with a side of fries, of course), yet there’s no need for any additional accouterments. Its flavors are remarkably complex, making it a strong contender for one of New York’s favorite arguments: the best burger in the city.

Zoli

Amant, 312 Maujer Street, Brooklyn

What to see:

There’s nothing unusual about a fish tank in a restaurant, but the tank at Zoli will catch you by surprise. With three large rectangular aquariums, the marine habitats are part of a work by artist Pierre Huyghe. The piece was commissioned by Amant founder and collector Lonti Ebers: The avant-garde artwork matches the atmosphere the adjacent art center is known for.

Unlike the tanks some restaurants have with creatures like lobsters that might soon become dishes, Huyghe’s are intentionally off-putting with alien-like crabs and GloFish (genetically modified to emit artificial hues) in murky water.

The aquatic triptych is inspired by nearby Newtown Creek, one of the most polluted estuaries in New York City. The water levels in the tanks rise and fall as if responding to an unknown tide, and the glass occasionally switches from opaque to transparent, adding a cinematic effect.

What to eat:

Zoli’s seafood-forward menu changes frequently, but the small plates are light and flavorful, making for a great shared experience and return visits. A surprising star of the menu is the “Olney salad,” whose ingredients change often, but are an assortment of fresh herbs and lettuces dressed in incredibly fine oil and vinegar.

Each dish is packed with bold and unexpected flavors, like the mussel dressing on the Romano beans with sungolds.

Marcel, Sotheby’s

945 Madison Avenue

What to see:

An endeavor between auction house Sotheby’s and the design firm Roman and Williams, Marcel is the French restaurant inside Sotheby’s headquarters, which opened last November. The Marcel Breuer–designed Brutalist building provides a dramatic setting, with soaring ceilings, large windows, and views of the sculpture garden.

Having two creative leaders at the helm, it’s no surprise that Marcel is expertly outfitted, from the tableware to the lighting fixtures in cast bronze and cast glass by Roman and Williams that complement Breuer’s signature circular designs overhead.

And, of course, there’s the art on offer from Sotheby’s. While an energetic Willem de Kooning painting and an abstract John Chamberlain sculpture might accompany your next meal, the selection will continue to change. The dining room, vitrines, lobby, stairwell, and garden terrace are packed with blue-chip fare, which at the time of publication also included works by Isamu Noguchi, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Andy Warhol, Louise Nevelson, and others.

What to eat:

Diners can rub elbows with collectors, tourists, and salespeople alike. But not all is business and power lunches at Marcel, as the food entices as much as the art.

The high prices preclude a casual outing, but for a special occasion there’s a reliable selection of French-leaning continental cuisine and brasserie fare like confit duck, foie gras, and onion soup.

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Swedish rapper Yung Lean to present first major art exhibition in Stockholm. https://ift.tt/7urPql3

Jonatan Leandoer Håstad, the Stockholm-born musician better known as Yung Lean, will present his first visual art exhibition, “Collected Works 2016–2026,” at Torsgatan 22 in Stockholm from September 25th through October 11th.

The show brings together a decade of paintings, collages, works on paper, sculpture, and dioramas—most never before exhibited—alongside a site-specific installation and a new narrative short film that Håstad executive produced and stars in. Rather than a standard gallery hang, the works are staged in different environments such as a salon, a television room, and a screening room.

Håstad, who is self-taught, organized the exhibition himself rather than working with an outside curator. It follows a recent live painting installation with Adidas Originals during Paris Fashion Week earlier this year, and several Instagram teasers released by the artist.

“Ever since I can remember I dreamed of colors,” he said in a statement. “I’ve made wooden sculptures and drawings and paintings since I was a kid. Just like my songs, the work is made through stream of consciousness. I go where the hand takes me.” Following the Stockholm run, a selection of works, primarily sculptures, will go to an international online auction in partnership with Bukowskis.

The exhibition arrives amid a broader run of musicians and actors staging their own visual art shows. Last summer, Ed Sheeran opened “Cosmic Carpark Paintings” at HENI Gallery in London, a collection of Jackson Pollock-influenced drip works made in a disused carpark and sold alongside prints for £900 ($1,224) each, with half the proceeds going to the Ed Sheeran Foundation. Sheeran was direct about the reference point and about his own standing as an artist: “It’s mostly just splashing colors on canvases, think Jackson Pollock... I am by no means ’an artist,’ but I do love making art.” Academy Award-winning actor Adrien Brody similarly opened “Made in America” at Eden Gallery in New York last year, his first show of new work in nearly a decade. The show featured large-scale mixed-media paintings and a sound installation of his own composition. Its opening also followed a $425,000 sale of a collage by Brody at the amfAR Cannes gala.

In Håstad’s case, his surreal imagery has run alongside his music since he emerged as the face of the Swedish rap collective Sad Boys and the cloud rap movement that rose to popularity in the early 2010s.

“My paintings mean nothing and also everything,” said the rapper of the exhibition “Here they are.”

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Why Women Bodybuilders Are Everywhere in Contemporary Art https://ift.tt/cOIhrmj

In Keerthana Kunnath’s photo series “Not What You Saw,” groups of brawny bodybuilders gaze potently into the lens as they bend and flex their muscles. But these depictions aren’t what you might expect of the physically demanding sport. Soaked in the golden southern Indian sun, wrapped in ornately embellished fabric, glittering jewelry, and flowers, these bodybuilders are powerful young women from Kerala.

Bodybuilding is an art form as well as a sport, celebrating shape and presentation as well as brute strength. These muscular celebrations, in art history, have usually been of men: from Frederic Leighton’s mighty and undeniably phallic 1877 sculpture An Athlete Wrestling with a Python to Michaelangelo’s towering 16th-century marble masterpiece David. Today, the gym bro aesthetic is a key part of the “manosphere,” as it’s often called, with male politicians such as Pete Hegseth showing themselves working out on social media to prove their masculinity.

In this cultural climate, contemporary artists are looking to women bodybuilders to reimagine gender and beauty stereotypes, allowing their mighty female protagonists to be variously brave, monstrous, beautiful, and always in control. Rather than portraying women as meek and mild, these artists capture the glamour and sexuality of their women bodybuilder subjects, as well as their physical potency.

Pin Up from the Magazine Lady Face Man Body, No. 3, 2011
Cassils
Human Rights Campaign Benefit Auction

It’s not the first time that the gender implications of bodybuilding have been the subject of contemporary art. In Cassils’s 2011 project CUTS, the Canadian performance artist used bodybuilding techniques and steroids to put on 23 pounds of muscle in 23 weeks, resulting in a photo series that depicts the transgender artist as a masculine, yet glamorous, figure.

Kunnath likewise decided to focus on bodybuilding to explore the gendered standards of her childhood. She started her career in fashion photography in London. When she began photographing bodybuilders in southern India in 2024, she wanted to do something different: confront traditional expectations of how a woman should look and behave.

“Growing up, there were always so many ideas around what a woman should be and how much space she was allowed to take up,” the photographer told Artsy ahead of her first solo museum exhibition opening at Foam Fotografiemuseum in Amsterdam on September 18th. “I was drawn to the women themselves; their individuality, confidence, and the fact that they had chosen a path so different from what we typically see women pursue from the region.”

Kiss of Fire, 2022
Ana Benaroya
Two Palms

Her subjects are photographed against a southern Indian landscape, dressed in a blend of traditional outfits from the region to create a juxtaposition with their built physiques. The images are also inspired by posters for vintage Malayalam films, where actresses would be shown as coquettish and pliable. “I wanted to borrow some of that visual language but turn it on its head,” she said. “I wanted the women to feel glamorous and powerful, but without taking away from their strength.”

Glamour is also a key part of the 2022 series “Core” by London-based photographer Celia Croft and art director Kate Kidney Bishop. In one image, a muscular woman stretches a pair of diamanté-encrusted bikini bottoms across her firmly toned glutes. Another photo is reminiscent of a devotional painting as it shows a woman gazing up into the light, her eyelids covered in icy blue eyeshadow, as her long acrylic nails stroke her clavicle.

Across the series, these women are physically powerful and enticingly glamorous. “The whole bodybuilding industry is about muscle, strength, power—and these women are redefining femininity and gender and finding a new space within that,” the pair said in an interview.

In this sense, women bodybuilders capture high femme sexuality as well as the physical strength usually associated with men. American painter Ana Benaroya revels in these two distinct aesthetics in her paintings of physically commanding women. Inspired by Michelangelo’s depictions of the body and contemporary photographs of bodybuilders, her female figures are flamboyant and frenzied, depicted in a palette of acid green, bright purple, electric blue, and hot pink. Their undulating muscles are enormous, creating the appearance of brawny goddesses.

They also have flowing hair, enormous breasts, and talon-like nails. In Spirit Colossal (2025), for example, two women are painted in vibrant red and blue, flexing against a natural backdrop of wildflowers and glittering night sky. “I love creating a balance between perceived opposites within my paintings,” the artist told Artsy. “I never want the women in my work to seem like one thing.”

Her works are also inspired by art historical depictions of women, where their sexuality is foremost. “Women’s bodies as objects of desire is something that is almost impossible to escape, but I am interested in harnessing that to my own end,” she said. “Yes, they can be ripped but they can also be voluptuous and do their hair and nails….They are powerful and monstrous, alluring and beautiful.”

Bodybuilder Beauty, 2023
Elsa Rouy
Larsen Warner

Spirit Colossal, 2025
Ana Benaroya
KOSAKU KANECHIKA

That ambiguity is also on view in the work of British artist Elsa Rouy. Her painted bodies merge together, variously muscular, bony, and bendy. In her 2023 painting Bodybuilder Beauty, a bald figure proudly holds their arms above their head. Their biceps ripple, ribcage flares, and breasts are pulled up near their chin.

“There’s an ambiguity and strength with the bodybuilder physique that I found interesting and wanted to explore,” Rouy told Artsy. “There’s a ferocity to it. I’m constantly trying to look into the push and pull of the body at breaking points and moments of intensity.”

For Bodybuilder Beauty, she was also inspired by a drawing by Jusepe de Ribera, who was known for his sinewy subjects. “Translating the contorted male body into one of a bold and confronting ambiguous figure was fun to do and a way of expressing my own ideas about alternate femininity.”

These vibrant depictions of physically extreme women create a new vision for preconceived notions of gendered behavior and appearance. As Kunnath told Artsy about the people in her photographs, “There is something really beautiful about seeing these women inhabit their bodies on their own terms, without trying to make themselves smaller or more conventionally feminine.”

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Why This Nigerian Collector Is Committed to Buying African Artworks that Feel Like Home https://ift.tt/L6EMDTy

For Dr. Myma Belo-Osagie, collecting art began with a simple goal: to fill her bare dorm room in law school. While at Harvard University, the Nigerian lawyer, collector, and arts patron wanted something to make her space feel less anonymous. Then she encountered a print of a portrait of an African man by Peter Paul Rubens.

“Something in his expression stayed with me long after I walked past it,” she recalled. “I think it was the first time an image really spoke to me and how I was feeling at the time and caused me to want to have it with me rather than simply admire it from afar.”

That encounter sparked an impulse to live with art that has remained at the center of Belo-Osagie’s art-buying ethos. Over the years, she has built a collection of more than 400 works spanning painting, ceramics, sculpture, tapestry, and quilts. She places particular emphasis on artists from Nigeria, Ghana, and across the African continent, including Larry Otoo, Ehinomen Okoeki, and Ndidi Dike.

From private pleasure to responsibility

“I have always bought what I like and what I find interesting—not necessarily because a piece is ‘valuable,’ whatever that means,” she told Artsy. In the early years, that meant buying from artists who were young, relatively unknown, and sometimes struggling to make a living.

While that instinct remains, her understanding of what support entails has evolved. A collection of this scale, she has come to recognize, “comes with certain obligations: documentation that fully acknowledges the artists, proper care, and thinking about what happens to the works after me.” Collecting, she said, has evolved “from simply being a private pleasure to becoming something closer to a responsibility to our society.”

That sense of responsibility is particularly pronounced in Belo-Osagie’s approach to African art. “I am drawn to work that captures African life and identity—scenes and items that reference the way we live, the way we see beauty, the things we use on a daily basis, the things that feel like ‘home’ to me,” she explained.

Her interests are also material. A work does not have to be conventionally beautiful or immediately legible to hold her attention. She is intrigued by objects that make her wonder how they were made and why an artist chose a particular material. She points to a sculpture by Nigerian artist Jacob Jari constructed almost entirely from cornstalks, which she acquired because she found it fascinating “that something so ordinary and ‘basic’ could be used to create art.”

Her tastes, meanwhile, remain fluid. “My favorite [artwork] tends to shift depending on the day of the week and my mood,” she said. One work she repeatedly returns to is Moyo Ogundipe’s Three Lagos Socialites (2007), a densely layered painting depicting a familiar social scene in the Nigerian city. Belo-Osagie is captivated by its detail and by the way it takes a subject explored by other artists and renders it with distinctive complexity.

Building support for artists beyond the collection

As her collecting practice has expanded, so has her engagement with philanthropy. For several years, Belo-Osagie was part of an NGO that encouraged Nigerian companies like banks and corporations to buy and display Nigerian art.

In 2025, her four children launched the Myma Art Prize to celebrate her 70th birthday. The prize rewards early- to mid-career artists from Ghana or Nigeria with $5,000, a funded residency, an exhibition, and professional development support—reflecting Belo-Osagie’s belief that financial support alone is not enough to sustain an artist’s career.

“I began my collecting of African art at a time when many talented artists could barely survive on art sales alone,” Belo-Osagie explained. “But money was never really the entire issue.” Early promise can bring attention, she noted, but once the spotlight moves on, artists still need professional support to continue developing their practices.

The experience of the prize’s first winner, Omolola Coker, has affirmed how beneficial the multifaceted approach can be. During Coker’s residency with Nosona in Benin City, Nigeria, she requested to extend her stay. For Belo-Osagie, it suggested that Coker remained open to being “stretched and refined.” During the residency, Coker has expanded beyond her primary practice of painting and experimented with other media, including bronze casting.

Reimagining a history of patronage

The prize’s format reflects a broader conception of patronage rooted in African history. “Historically we have thought of patronage as wealthy families, individuals, or institutions supporting art and artists by commissioning works and funding artists,” Belo-Osagie explained. “In pre-colonial times, the Asantehene [the Asante kingdom in Ghana] and the Oba of Benin [the Benin kingdom in Nigeria] and their respective palaces were largely responsible for supporting the artists and gold and bronze casters.”

Their support led to the creation of the renowned gold weights in the Asante kingdom and the world-famous Benin Bronzes. This form of patronage, Belo-Osagie explained, was significantly reduced during the slave trade and colonization.

With this model in mind, Belo-Osagie views her role as a collector with a keen understanding of the impact her support has on individual artists, as well as on the broader industry.

“Ultimately collectors help to create legacy and stability for the art world,” she said. “Certainly for Africa I feel one of the major responsibilities is to help develop an art ecosystem that works for the way we, as Africans, want to live today and furthermore, one that provides better understanding and context for not just the intrinsic value of works of African art but also for the economic value art brings to the creative economy and the GDP of our countries.”

Collecting as preservation

For Belo-Osagie, supporting artists also holds a deeper mission to remind future generations of what was lost in the arts due to colonialism and the slave trade.

“I see part of this responsibility as further rebuilding and reviving the awareness amongst a younger generation of the incredible talent, skill, and creativity Africa had in the arts, and restoring confidence in our ability to continue to create and innovate in this space,” she said.

Collecting, in this sense, becomes an act not only of preservation, but restoration.

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