By: Chieloka Anadu
Martha Adanma Okechukwu is a Nigerian visual artist based in Lagos whose largely figurative practice uses the human figure to explore emotion, memory, and lived experience – particularly around identity, family, childhood, culture, relationships, and belonging. Central to her thinking is a fascination with how experience connects across time, “how the past shapes the present and how the present carries something into the future.” That preoccupation explains why profile heads recur so often throughout her work: for Martha, they represent “layers of time, memory and human experience.”
Her process begins in observation. “A lot of my inspiration comes from observing people and everyday life,” she says, noting relationships, conversations, expressions, and small moments that might seem unremarkable but stay lodged in her mind regardless. Some works grow out of her own experience, others from something she has witnessed in someone else’s life, but the throughline is consistent: she is drawn to the way people love, care for, protect, and depend on one another. A piece can begin as nothing more than an image or a feeling, with the fuller story only emerging as she works.
Asked about her influences, Adanma names Emeka Ilechukwu, Saheed Adelakun, Sodji Yoloye, and Naledi Modupi, each of whom has shaped her in different ways – sometimes through their work, sometimes through words of encouragement that stayed with her. But she is careful to frame influence loosely. “For me, influence is not always about copying someone’s style,” she says. Sometimes another artist’s work simply changes how you think, or offers a new way of seeing your own – and it’s that kind of encounter, more than direct imitation, that has helped her keep growing into her own voice.
Materially, she works mainly in acrylic paint, often bringing in beads, cowries, fabric, or other elements depending on what a given piece needs. These materials don’t appear in every work, and when they do, they’re never purely decorative – “they have to add meaning or help tell the story.” One technique remains constant across her practice: she renders skin using segmented areas of colour, an approach inspired by stained glass and the way its lines separate colour while the individual pieces still resolve into a single image. She carries that same logic into her figures, using colour, line, and tonal value to build form and generate emotion.
When creative blocks arrive, Adanma resists forcing an idea into being. Sometimes she’ll prime a canvas and leave it blank, keeping it somewhere visible and simply staring at it until something begins to emerge from the empty space. She also tends to work on at least two pieces simultaneously, so that if she grows tired or bored with one, she can set it aside for another. Returning to a piece later, she often sees it differently – a shift in perspective that helps clarify what needs to happen next.
If her artwork could speak, she believes it would say: “Look a little closer.” There is usually more to a piece than what registers at first glance – the figures, colours, expressions, and materials are all there for a reason. Still, she resists dictating a fixed reading of the work. She likes the possibility that a viewer might look at one of her pieces and recognise something from their own life instead – a relationship, a person, a memory, or simply a feeling. That personal connection, she says, matters to her a great deal.
Participating in the Anadu Art Fair means a lot to Adanma, offering a chance to share her work with a wider audience and connect with other artists, collectors, and people drawn to art. The fair’s theme, “Homecoming: Convergence,” resonates directly with ideas she already explores in her practice, particularly connection and belonging. Professionally, she sees it as another opportunity to grow and introduce her work to new audiences; personally, it feels like a further step in her ongoing journey as an artist – one she says she is grateful to be part of, and genuinely looking forward to.
Follow Adanma’s journey on Instagram: @marthaoada_creations
Blog
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