Afikaris

“Individually, the elements are fragile. Together, they become resilient. What protects us is not isolation, but connection.”
— Ozioma Onuzulike

In a recent interview, the artist speaks about clay’s enduring influence on his practice, the histories embedded in materials, and the idea of what he calls a “fragile strength”.

Drawing on an Igbo proverb - “A single broomstick breaks quickly; but a bundle of broomsticks does not break easily” - his sculptures are composed of thousands of fragile ceramic elements joined into expansive structures whose strength emerges through collective form.

For Onuzulike, that dual condition, durability combined with vulnerability, has become a metaphor for human existence itself. “We survive through connection, patience, repair, and transformation. That is ultimately what my work seeks to express”.

🔗 Read the full conversation via the link in bio.

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Shields by Ozioma Onuzulike
📅 Through 8 August, 2026
📍AFIKARIS Gallery, 7 rue Notre Dame de Nazareth, 75003 Paris, France

Boluwatife Oyediran at the Mattatuck Museum

Congratulations to for being part of the exhibition  « About Face: 250 Years of American Portraits » at the Mattatuck Museum, Connecticut, USA, featuring the artwork « A Father’s Love » (2021) which recently joined the collection.

Created during a residency in Accra, Ghana, in 2021,  « A Father’s Love » depicts a man holding a child in a cotton field. Through this intimate scene, Oyediran intertwines themes of care, dignity, and familial affection with the layered histories of Black labour, resilience, and cultural inheritance embedded within the landscape. Produced prior to the artist’s move to the United States, the painting reflects his early engagement with transatlantic narratives of memory and Black experience. It also exemplifies the powerful figurative language that continues to define his practice today.

About Face: 250 Years of American Portraits, Mattatuck Museum
📆 Through August 16, 2026
📍144 West Main Street - Connecticut, United States

📷 Installation views: Courtesy of the Mattatuck Museum, Waterbury Connecticut. Photo by Julie Francois and Tanya Labeck

| Opening Thursday 21 May |
l Ozioma Onuzulike |

Join us this Thursday, from 6 to 9 PM, for the opening of Ozioma Onuzulike’s second solo exhibition at the gallery — Shields.

By fashioning in clay, a tool—the shield—meant to provide protection on the metaphorical battlefield, Onuzulike exploits what he calls the material’s “fragile strength,” to gesture towards the precarious realities of the postcolonial condition. Onuzulike’s Shield Series, like his earlier ceramic garments, refers to the colonial trade in palm oil to comment upon its ramifications on the environment in Nigeria today. The differently glazed beads and buttons provide the artist with a varied visual vocabulary with which to experiment with patterns that evoke textiles, chainmail, lace, and other dress traditions that resonate with complex histories of trade, protection, prestige, and communal and familial continuity in Nigeria. Throughout his practice, the artist deftly explores the connection between the colonial history of extraction in Nigeria and contemporary political corruption. Onuzulike reminds us that colonial histories remain unfinished.

Ozioma Onuzulike | Shields
📆 21 May - 8 August, 2026
Opening reception: Thursday 21May | 6-9PM
📍7 rue Notre Dame de Nazareth, 75003 Paris