In one room, his mother stitched dresses from wax-print fabric. In another, his father repaired shoes, coaxing leather back to life with quiet precision.
As a child in Nigeria, Samuel Nnorom moved between the two. Watching, sketching, collecting scraps. The rhythm of his home wasn’t loud, but it was steady. It was the rhythm of making things that last.
Now in 2025, on the floor of Art Basel Hong Kong, that same rhythm pulses through Held by Love, Bound by Faith, the debut solo presentation from the Nigerian artist, represented by Abuja-based gallery Retro Africa. Known for his sculptural use of Ankara—West Africa’s ubiquitous wax print fabric—Nnorom transforms these vibrant textiles into forms that speak of faith, identity, and collective memory.
His practice belongs to a lineage, yet resists easy categorization. You can trace echoes of Arte Povera’s embrace of everyday materials, the meditative repetition of Post-Minimalist artists like Eva Hesse, and even the relational sensibility of Social Practice art. But Nnorom adds something less fashionable and potentially more radical: Sincerity. His works aren’t ironic or sarcastic. They’re alive with feeling and a sense that seems very close to honor.
Each sculpture—whether it’s the intimate, kidney-shaped Soul Mate or the sprawling metaphor of Crossing the Atlantic—meditates on survival and the unseen forces that connect us. Sourced from second-hand markets, the Ankara fabric is sewn into foam-stuffed “bubbles,” which Nnorom arranges into biomorphic clusters. They resemble cells, chromosomes, and constellations—simultaneously biological and societal.
Blooming Figs draws from the biblical story of the fig tree to celebrate community flourishing. Being Part of Growth uses DNA-inspired forms to explore relationship-building—how we forge bonds, despite mismatched values or jagged edges. And in Constantly Evolving, the Nigerian artist turns inward, using fabric as a metaphor for creative growth, stitching together a self-portrait made of persistence and reinvention.
What’s striking about Nnorom’s work is how personal it is — and how political that personal becomes. By reworking discarded materials into intricate, sculptural constellations, he gives form to the African experienc. Trauma, beauty, contradiction, and power. In a global art world often obsessed with spectacle, Nnorom slows things down. His work invites closeness, patience, and care.
And it all leads back to that workshop in Nigeria—to the scraps his mother once stitched into dresses, to the shoes his father repaired by hand. Samuel Nnorom doesn’t just inherit their legacy—he elevates it. What was once utility becomes poetry. What was once repair becomes revelation.
Samuel Nnorom, now, stitches the fabric of the future into sculptures that remember where we’ve been—and imagine where we could go.
