Naomi
Naomi is a portrait of Omuku’s close friend. The work is depicted in the artist’s well-known style, whereby a lightly outlined shell of a figure is marked with dark red and green paint. Due to the lack of identifiable features in the figure, the focus of the portrait is shifted away from representation to interiority, highlighting her state of mind. The stripes in her clothing mirror the pattern of the sanyan fabric which the work is painted on. A central part of Omuku’s method is her use of sanyan fabric, a pre-colonial Nigerian textile traditionally used for draped clothing, which she primes with gesso and applies oil paint onto. Her paintings are often presented as wall hangings and the uninterrupted sanyan can be seen around the edges of the painting and from behind. Omuku describes her use of the sanyan textile as breathing new life into a pre-existing work of art which has been discarded, since sanyan fabric is now out of production.