My Paintings, Sculptures, and Installations explore transformation and innovation while communicating playfulness and quiet enjoyment.
I engage the histories that are fixed in used things, which tell of our lived lives held within them, as they have witnessed these. They bear our past and present actions, and in their tale about these, they reveal our future. They embody memory. I investigate and try to fathom this memory and experience.
My work is inspired by people- living (actions) and the everyday. Influenced by architecture and design—lines, shapes, forms, and the histories of ordinary, mundane materials-, I enjoy innovation and participation. I create unique, quirky artworks that reference human actions and activities in society, and how these affect the general human condition.
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​I live and work in a quiet neighbourhood outside Abuja, Nigeria, where I find freedom and delight in assembling local found materials into objects of contemplation that I sometimes invite my audiences to contribute to. Experimentation, an affinity for fabrics, and curiosity with colour and movement drive me.
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​I explore fibres in found used fabrics; naturally occurring fibres in local food plants - okra, sugarcane, sisal, banana - made into handmade paper; fibres in thread and used cartons; synthetic fibres/plastic in recovered cigarette filters, and used plastic bags.
From Nigeria, Amarachi Okafor is a multi-medium artist practising consistently since the early 2000s. Her Sculptures, Paintings, and Art events speak about a troubled, happy, and responsible society, as she explores and transforms used commonplace material.
Inspired by people (issues of living, human actions) and the everyday; her art-making involves research and coordination, exploring design and architecture - shapes, forms... and the history of things (everyday, mundane items).
She enjoys experimentation and participation, make singular quirky artworks about human actions in society.
Amarachi’s artistic training rewarded her with a BA (Painting), in 2002, and an MFA (Sculpture), in 2006 (both from the University of Nigeria Nsukka), and MA in Curatorial Practice, 2012 from Falmouth College of Art, Cornwall, UK. She has exhibited work and practised; had and shared studio spaces worldwide in Africa, Europe, Asia, the Americas, the Caribbean Islands, and the Middle East.
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In 2014, she was awarded the National Art Competition (Nigeria) jury prize. She has exhibited at Babel Art Space, Norway, Oriel Mostyn Gallery, Wales, Manchester Art Gallery, UK, Jogjarkarta Biennial, Indonesia. She produces socially engaged participatory public art projects with audiences in galleries and alternative art spaces, a unique endeavour she refers to as relational public art.
At home in Nigeria, she works from the research and production space she initiated in Abuja. Her unique art practice is international and also well-rooted locally.