kó

Congratulations to Victoria-Idongesit Udondian for her participation at the Venice Biennale! Victoria Udondian’s project, Obroni Wawu (2019-2026), is a large scale textile installation that questions the complex dynamics of the global second-hand clothing industry, particularly in Africa, where many countries have become a dumping ground for surplus consumer waste from the West. The influx of used clothing bales into Ghana, Nigeria, and Kenya has generated significant environmental challenges, as large quantities of unusable garments accumulate in vast textile landfills that pollute surrounding landscapes. Obroni Wawu brings together elements from two past bodies of work developed through site-specific interventions between New York and Ghana, examining the intersection of global trade systems, migration, labour and waste. The project incorporates Udondian’s sculptural installation, titled Ofong Ufok (2019-2022), realized in collaboration with Stitch Buffalo, a refugee resettlement organization in New York supporting immigrant women. Udondian intercepted bales of used clothing intended for shipment to Africa and worked alongside participants to produce a large-scale community textile sculpture. In the project’s second phase, Udondian produced Okrika Reclaimed (2024-2025) in Kantamanto Market, Ghana, one of the largest second-hand clothing markets in the world. Treating the market as both site and subject, the artist created, performed, and exhibited in real time. Udondian collaborated with women head porters known as kayayei (“she who carries the burden”), weaving sculptural headpieces that reflect their lived experiences within the market’s labour economy. @vickolors

Congratulations to Marcia Kure for her participation at the Venice Biennale! Marica Kure presents Network V, a new body of work developed between her studios in Nigeria and the United States. The project brings together large-scale drawings and sculptural works within a single, interdependent system. Drawing functions as the structural core of the project: where decisions are made, routes traced, and material histories registered. Across Network V, marks accumulate. Lines operate as routes and pressures; surfaces carry density and duration. Materials are selected for their histories of circulation and transformation, registering contact and movement across time. Drawing remains the primary site of inquiry, while sculpture carries the marks of exchange, and movement into space. Through Network V, Kure engages how bodies and materials are shaped by long-standing systems of labor, trade, and power. The work holds these forces in tension, registering their effects materially and spatially. @marciakure_official

Susan Inglett Gallery, New York, and kó, Lagos, are pleased to announce that Marcia Kure has been invited to the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia by Koyo Kouoh, taking place May 9-November 22, 2026. Marcia Kure (b. 1970, Kano, Nigeria) lives and works between the United States and Nigeria. Her multidisciplinary practice repositions drawing as a system of inscription through which materials are condensed, rerouted, and made to bear weight. She engages synthetic hair, indigo, kola nut, and gold as active agents within systems of circulation and material exchange. Her practice approaches substrate not as passive surface but as infrastructure, a site where histories accumulate and spatial relations are pressurized and reorganized. Across large-scale drawing, sculpture, and installation, Kure extends inscription from surface to structure. In addition to solo exhibitions in Nigeria, Germany, the Netherlands, England, and the United States, her work has been presented at La Triennale, Paris (2013); the International Biennial of Contemporary Art, Seville (2006); and the Sharjah Biennial (2005). She participated in the 11th Dak’Art Biennale, Dakar (2014), and was included in the traveling exhibition Body Talk, shown at WIELS Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels; Frac Lorraine, Metz; and Lunds Konsthall, Sweden. She also participated in Not a Single Story at Wanås Konst, Sweden, and NIROX Sculpture Park, Johannesburg (2018–19). Kure served as visiting professor at the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm (2019–20). She was a Research Fellow at the Smithsonian Institution (2008), a Visual Artist in Residence at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2014), and the recipient of the Uche Okeke Prize for Drawing (1994). Image: Marcia Kure, Installation View, Network at the Menil Drawing Institute, Houston | Courtesy the Menil Institute | Photo Credit: Zainob + Mathew Create. @marciakure_official @susaninglettgallery #biennalearte2026 #inminorkeys @labiennale

As kó’s Spring Salon comes to an end, we would like to thank everyone who visited, engaged with the work, and supported the exhibition throughout its run.

Installing Network V La Biennale di Venezia Koyo Kouoh Minor Keys #gratitude #biennaleArte2026 #LaBiennaleDiVenezia #inMinorKeys

kó's exhibition, Osogbo, has been reviewed in the April 2026 print issue of Artforum (@artforum ). The exhibition traced the evolution of the Osogbo Art School, a movement that emerged in the early 1960s and charted a distinctive path for modern art in Nigeria. Thank you to @ayodejirotinwa for the great review!

Abiodun Olaku is a painter known for his mastery of tonal realism and his sensitive treatment of light and atmosphere. His practice is defined by a methodical process of building form from dark to light, using a restrained palette of greys to construct depth before introducing subtle highlights. This careful modulation of shadow and illumination creates a heightened sense of drama, imbuing his compositions with mood and psychological resonance. In Oko Baba Cul-de-Sac (2025), Olaku captures an urban environment through a subdued tonal range, where shadow dominates and light emerges gradually, suggesting both stillness and underlying tension. In contrast, Full Bloom (2025) draws on the traditions of the Igbo Mmanwu masquerade, presenting the masked figure as both performer and spiritual vessel. Set against a dark, textured ground, the figure emerges in ornate costume and feathered regalia.

Bunmi Babatunde is a Nigerian sculptor known for his fluid, expressive sculptures created in wood, bronze, and fiberglass. His works often explore themes of human evolution, growth, and transformation, using the body as a central vehicle for expression. Babatunde’s figures are frequently elongated and contorted, emphasizing movement and emotional intensity while reflecting a modernist approach to sculptural form. The stretched proportions and dynamic gestures of his figures evoke states of tension, reflection, and spiritual ascent, situating the human form within broader narratives of personal and collective development.

Victor Ekpuk is a Nigerian-American artist whose practice is rooted in drawing as a fundamental mode of expression, extending into painting, printmaking, collage, sculpture, installation, and public art. Taking the ancient Nigerian script Nsibidi as a point of departure, he has developed a distinct abstract visual language that operates between writing and image. His work reimagines graphic sign systems as fluid, evolving forms capable of conveying layered meanings across cultural contexts. In Children of the Full Moon (2003) and Prisoner of Conscience (2007), Ekpuk explores the expressive and symbolic potential of mark-making as a vehicle for narrative and reflection. These works feature dense accumulations of signs, gestural lines, and calligraphic forms that suggest both encoded language and intuitive drawing. The compositions unfold as immersive fields of symbols, where meaning is not fixed but continually shifting. The works are both hand painted with acrylic ink on an archival inkjet print with pigment ink on cotton paper. Another version of Prisoner of Conscience(2007) was featured in the artist’s solo exhibition at Princeton University Art Museum in 2023, and is now included in their permanent collection.

Gerald Chukwuma’s practice engages sculpture and assemblage, transforming found wooden panels and discarded materials into richly textured, narrative surfaces. His works combine low-relief carving, pigment, burning, and embedded objects to construct intricate visual fields that interrogate migration, memory, and the socio-political environment. Rooted in material transformation, his practice reclaims the discarded, imbuing it with layered historical and cultural significance. Moonlight Tales (undated) exemplifies Chukwuma’s approach to storytelling through material and surface. The work unfolds as a series of densely worked wooden panels, where carved motifs, incised lines, and painted passages coexist with embedded fragments. Drawing on Uli and Nsibidi symbol systems, the composition operates as both text and image, weaving together personal memory and collective narrative. The tactile surface, marked by processes of burning and chiselling, evokes a sense of temporal accumulation.

Jerry Buhari is an artist, curator, and professor whose practice spans painting, drawing, and installation. His work is characterised by an experimental engagement with non-traditional materials and serial processes, often employing vibrant colour and dynamic formal arrangements as a visual language to explore political and social dynamics. Through repetition, layering, and material play, Buhari constructs compositions that move between personal expression and collective experience. A Gbagyi Story II (1983) draws from indigenous narratives, translating them into a complex abstract visual field. Thelayered composition evokes both landscape and encoded storytelling, reflecting the multiplicity of histories embedded within Gbagyi identity.

Rom Isichei is a mixed media artist whose practice explores metaphors drawn from everyday social and personal experiences. Working across painting, drawing, and collage, his compositions often examine human relationships, spirituality, and aspects of cultural life. Isichei is particularly recognized for his expressive portraiture, characterized by dense, textured surfaces and layered brushwork. In Hmmm… I See What You See (undated), Isichei constructs a composition of interlocking geometric forms and textured surfaces arranged in a patchwork-like structure. Blocks of muted color—cream, ochre, pink, and pale blue—are layered with vertical ridges and tactile marks. Embedded within the composition are subtle figurative suggestions, including a simplified face and a central circular motif, which emerge from the abstract grid. The work reflects Isichei’s interest in blending abstraction with symbolic references to human presence, allowing forms to oscillate between architectural structure and portrait-like imagery. Repose in Her Comfort Zone (2010) depicts a reclining female figure absorbed in reading, rendered through Isichei’s distinctive impasto technique. Thick applications of oil paint create a richly textured surface in which the figure appears both sculpted and painterly. The composition emphasizes intimacy and stillness: the figure lies comfortably on the ground, her relaxed posture and focused gaze directed toward the open book. The warm palette of ochres, creams, and orange tones reinforces the sense of quiet contemplation.