REWA: the self-taught painter rebuilding Igbo heritage in portraiture

REWA: the self-taught painter rebuilding Igbo heritage in portraiture

REWA paints the women of Igboland in color saturated enough to stop a scroll. She calls the practice Igbo Vernacular Art, a term she coined herself, and she resists the more familiar label of Contemporary African Art. The body of work that first got her noticed, The Pantheon, took on the deities of Nigeria and won her the 2017 Young Contemporary slot at ReLe Gallery in Lagos.

Who they are

REWA was born in Nigeria in 1987. She is self-taught as a painter. According to her published biography, she holds a degree in physiology and pharmacology from UCL and spent time as Head of Corporate Development and Investor Relations at a company listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange before she turned to painting full time. That detail comes from a single source, so treat it as reported rather than settled.

Her subject is specific. She paints the women of Onitsha, the Igbo trading town, and the rites that mark their lives: naming ceremonies, bride price negotiations, the wine-carrying ceremony that precedes a wedding. Her 2017 collection Onicha Ado N'Idu examined Igbo naming traditions directly, and a related series, INU NWUNYE: Bride Price, followed the same thread into marriage custom.

The Pantheon carried her into ReLe Gallery's 2017 Young Contemporary program. The same year, a joint show called Her Story: Sisterhood That Transcends put her work in London at the Gallery of African Art. From there her exhibition history moved quickly: a group appearance at Zeitz MOCAA in Cape Town as part of the museum's Back to the Future show, a finalist spot in Jonathan Ferrara Gallery's NO DEAD ARTISTS juried exhibition in New Orleans, and in 2019 her first solo show anywhere, Nwa Agbo: Entering Adolescence, which ran at that same New Orleans gallery from April 17 to May 23. A second solo show followed at Jonathan Ferrara in 2021, alongside a duo show called Emancipation at OOA Gallery. Her work has also traveled to art fairs, among them Art Dubai, Art Miami, Expo Chicago and Art Market San Francisco, and to the National Museum of Nigeria.

Some dates in her exhibition record conflict across the sources available. Call the fair and group-show run the late 2010s into the early 2020s rather than pinning down years that different listings give differently.

Where they sit in the market

REWA carries Okasen's emerging tier, with Nigeria as her listed nationality and Ooa Gallery and SMO Contemporary Art as her gallery representation. That is the whole of her market footprint on the platform right now. She has no valuation on file, no index appearance, and she is absent from the latest OKN Movers 100 snapshot, a 25-name ranked list headed by William Kentridge.