Samuel Nnorom (b. 1990, Nigeria) is an international artist currently working in Nsukka. His current body of works are  poetically blended between textile, painting, and sculpture, through studio actions like stitching, sewing, rolling, tying, stringing, and suspending. His body of work is typically constructed from pieces of Ankara/African print fabric scraps collected from tailors or cast-off clothing from homes, along with discarded foam and fibres from furniture workshops that are wrapped and stitched into bubbles of various colours and sizes as he considers these bubble forms as human and their actions, and inactions to survive and connect within spaces.

 

Nnorom is  the founder and Director of Ulo Nka Residency in Nsukka. A space design to bridge gaps between academic art and real studio practice by offering 6month full-funded residency to fresh grads and he also offers complimentary studio space for artist to hone their craft. He holds an MFA in sculpture from the prestigious University of Nigeria and belongs to the New Nsukka School of Art. 

 

Nnorom has won several national and international art prizes, which include, ex aequo the Ettore e Ines Fico Prize at the Artissima Fair Italy 2023, Global Prize winner, Art for Change, Saatchi Gallery London UK 2022, Strauss & Co and Cassirer Welz Award, South Africa 2021. He has exhibited in several solo and important group shows with galleries and art fairs in Africa, Europe, America, Middle-East and Asia. He has an institutional and a Museum solo exhibition with Saatchi Gallery London and Textile Museum of Canada respectively in 2024. He had prestigious residencies with important institutions such as Black Rock Senegal 2023/2024, BISO Ouagadougou Burkina-Faso 2023, Guest Artist Space (GAS) Yinka Shonibare Foundation Residency Nigeria 2023, Royal Overseas League and The Art House Residency London 2022, Bag Factory residency South Africa 2022. He has gained recognition in several collections, like; Perez Museum Collection Miami USA, The Taguchi Collection, Anthony David Collections, Fondazione Marino Golinelli Collection, Ettore Fico Museum, Fondation Gandur pour l’Art, Blachere Fondation, and The Schulting Art Collection, Kunsthal KAdE in Amersfoort, Netherlands.

Thus, in Nnorom’s recent public installation, he explores using fishing and mosquito nets on a monumental scale that engages his audience in seeking to interrogate the social, emotional, political, and economic challenges faced by migrants and displaced persons around the world.