Exhibitions
CHIDINMA ONUKWURU: IT'S FRIGHTENING HAVING THIS MUCH PRESENCE
Space 204 (Vanderbilt University) / 1204 25th Ave. S. January 8, 2026 - January 29, 2026 (Reception: January 8 3:00pm - 5:00pm)
Chidinma Onukwuru
It’s Frightening Having This Much Presence is a portrayal of Onukwuru’s ongoing research and intimate reflections on Igbo spirituality, ancestral ties, and the enduring relevance of traditional Igbo cosmology in modern life. The exhibition honors generations of craftwomen who embedded prayers and affirmations within their work, quietly carrying the essence of Igbo faith into the present.
Through this body of work, Onukwuru engages with the deeply personal dimensions of spiritual inheritance. She reflects on names carried, including her own, and how they function as living incantations of communal and personal destiny. Guided by traditional Nigerian techniques imparted by Philadelphia potter Robin Williams-Turnage — herself in the lineage of the legendary potter, Ladi Kwali — Onukwuru grounds this body of work in the continuity of a tactile wisdom. From this foundation, she shapes a contemporary artistic voice reflective of her personal and collective identities.
Chidinma Onukwuru is a multidisciplinary artist from Philadelphia, PA whose work reflects her sustained inquiry into the complexities of her Nigerian-American identity. In her practice, she merges inherited traditions with contemporary form through her explorations of spirituality, feminism, Blackness, and the wider African diaspora. Central to her process is an attention to materiality and its capacity to hold memory, shape narrative, and anchor ritual. Onukwuru has worked in video, photography, collage, ceramics, sculpture, and installation.
Since graduating Vanderbilt University, Onukwuru has continued her arts education in collaboration with local Philadelphia artists and community organizations. Supported by the Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge Hamblet Award, she has traveled internationally and within the U.S. to study how Nigerian diasporic communities preserve, reinterpret, and transform cultural practices across distance and time.
Chidinma is the 2024 recipient of the Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge Hamblet Award - a travel grant that allows one senior art major of the Vanderbilt University Department of Art financial support to travel and develop their studio practice the year following graduation. The award was established in 1984, a gift by Clement H. Hamblet in memory of his wife, Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge - who met Hamblet while studying painting in Paris (during a sabbatical from Peabody College) where they met.
