Chioma Ebinama
The Breeder Open Studio
June 2, 2020–August 31, 2020The Breeder Feeder
It is with great pleasure that we welcome Chioma Ebinama to The Breeder Open Studio, an initiative that offers Time to the Artist but also to the Viewer in order to communicate and engage with each other in more substantial ways.
Chioma Ebinama has set up a studio inside the gallery which is open by appointment, so that visitors can meet her, discuss her practice and follow the production process, prior to her forthcoming exhibition at The Breeder Feeder (dates to be announced soon). Artists participating in the The Breeder Open Studio have the luxury of time and also the unique opportunity to spend time in the city of Athens and get inspired by its unique heritage and vibrant contemporary scene. Working inside the gallery prior to the exhibition allows the artists to relate to the space differently and gain a deeper connection to the city.
Chioma Ebinama (1988, USA) makes figurative watercolors on paper to explore drawing and visual narrative as a meditative practice and tool for self-liberation. Raised in the United States by Nigerian Christian immigrants, she is drawn to the aesthetic of formalized religion for its potential to celebrate inner life. As she seeks to create new mythologies for the African Diaspora, her work is influenced by a myriad of sources, from West African cosmology, to folk art of the global South, to the visual language of Western religion and Eastern spiritual traditions. The collision of aesthetics is indicative of Ebinama’s nomadic life in recent years as she breaths the air of Mexico, South Korea, India, Malaysia, now Greece and soon a return to her native land of Nigeria.
Ebinama has mounted solo exhibitions at Catinca Tabacaru (2018) and Fortnight Institute (2020) in New York City, at Boys’ Quarters Project Space in Port Harcourt, Nigeria (2019), and upcoming at The Breeder in Athens, Greece (2020). She is also in the process of illustrating a children’s book written by Kevin Young, poetry editor of The New Yorker and Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, with Make Me A World, an imprint of Random House books curated by Christopher Myers.
