Ndidi Emefiele

Ndidi Emefiele (born June 12, 1987) is a Nigerian contemporary artist and painter. She was born in Abuja, Nigeria, and she currently lives in Northampton, UK. Emefiele's works are composed on large canvases and a great use of color and very bold brush strokes. Ndidi Emefiele started her career in Nigeria but later moved to the United Kingdom.

Personal life Ndidi Emefiele was born in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria. She was one of four sisters in her family, and they all vowed to protect each other. Emefiele described Abuja as being very conservative in their ideals and the way women are treated. Emefiele has also said that Abuja was in the very early stages of development when she was born. As a young child there were no art museums and all they had were books. It was from a book about artist Ben Enwonwu where Emefiele got the inspiration to be an artist and the desire to travel to London to pursue her dreams.

As a young girl Emefiele only showed interest in doing art. Even in classes involving other subjects she would draw doodles and sketches. Emefiele says she would go around the neighborhood drawing sketches of anything she saw, one day she drew a cat on the wall and her neighbor gave her a stack of papers to draw on. At this time, art was not looked at as a profitable career, so her parents were very ify when it came to this fixation on being an artist. Her figures all wear glasses as a curtain or shield to hide behind in the face of a misogynistic society. She has also said that she does not like the stereotypes that come with being a female artist. In fact, during one exhibition she decide to stay completely silent so people could absorb her art without any pretences.

2012 Eden (Beauty & Temptation), Abuja Transcorp Hilton, Abuja, Nigeria

2013 Unmatched-Beauty, Abuja Transcorp Hilton, Abuja, Nigeria New Traditions in Contemporary Nigerian Painting, Abuja, NIgeria Arthouse Modern and Contemporary Art Auction, Lagos, NIgeria Living in Silence (Deafness awareness), Transcorp HIlton, Abuja, Nigeria Plight of Women, Female Artist association of Nigeria, French Cultural Centre, Abuja, Nigeria

2014 Life Through My Window, Nike Art Gallery, Lagos, Nigeria FNB Joburg Artfair, Sandton Convention Centre, Johannesburg, South Africa The Next Fifty Years: Contemporary Nigerian Art, organized by the Society of Nigerian Artists, Lagos, Nigeria 22nd Pan African Film and Arts festival, Artfest Los Angeles, California, USA

2015 Cape Town Art Fair, Cape Town, South Africa The Slade Interim Show, Slade School Of Fine Art, University College, London, UK Contemporary African art Exhibition, Chelsea Town Hall Library, London, UK

2016 Global African Profiles, Gallery of African Arts, London, UK

2017 Loud, rosenfeld porcini, London, UK 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair, rosenfeld porcini solo booth, New York, USA The Figure in Contemporary Art, rosenfeld porcini, London, UK

2018 Pets, Parties, and a Cuddle, rosenfeld porcini, London, UK Reclamation! Pan-African Works from the Beth Rudin De Woody Collection, Taubman Museum, Virginia, US

2019 Contemplating the Spiritual in Contemporary Art, rosenfeld porcini, London, UK

2020 Here as heaven, rosenfeld porcini, London, UK Queen: From the Collection of CCH Pounder, The Charles H. Wright Museum of African American HIstory, Detroit, USA Xenia: Crossroads in Portrait Painting, Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York, NY

2021 Ndidi Emefiele: Unconquerable, Retrospective at MoCADA, Brooklyn, NY, USA The Landscape: from the exterior to the interior, gallery rosenfeld, London UK Our Other Us, Art Encounters Contemporary Art Biennial, Timisoara, Romania Bold Black British, Christie's, London, UK Citizens or Memory, The perimeter, London, UK

2022 Empowerment, Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany

2023 The Gift of Fellowship, rosenfeld porcini, London UK

Awards In 2016, Emefiele won the Olive Prize for Excellence in Painting from the Slade School of Fine Arts.