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ARTROAD – Exhibition | NELLY ATING: EKA IBAN (MOTHER OF WOMEN)Dates: JUNE 13 to 27, 2025Omenka Gallery is proud to present Eka Iban (Mother of Women), an intimate online exhibition by Nigerian visual artist Nelly Ating, running from June 13 to 27, 2025.

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NELLY ATING: EKA IBAN (MOTHER OF WOMEN)Dates: JUNE 13 to 27, 2025Omenka Gallery is proud to present Eka Iban (Mother of Women), an intimate online exhibition by Nigerian visual artist Nelly Ating, running from June 13 to 27, 2025. Ating’s debut digital presentation explores the layered and often fragile relationship between a millennial daughter and her boomer mother within Nigerian sociocultural traditions. In Eka Iban, an Efik phrase meaning “mother of women”, Ating stitches her mother’s photographic archive into abstract mixed media collages, revealing the weight of cultural expectations shouldered by Nigerian women across generations. Working at the intersection of identity and memory, Ating reframes her mother’s story—once obscured by strict religious observance and unpaid domestic labour—into a narrative of resilience, agency, and post-feminist ambition. “My mother was my first employer. She would pay me as her shop assistant, and we fought over that as well, as I felt she was unbearably tough as an employer too. But my mother set the tone for the ambition I would later pursue. Eka Iban is an intimate project but also a recognition of my growth and choosing to accept socially constructed roles or dismantling them and, for once, restoring agency to my mother.”  Social Media HandlesInstagram — @omenkagalleryX — @omenkagalleryFacebook — Omenka GalleryWebsite — http://www.omenka.gallery  
About the ArtistNelly Ating is a multimedia artist whose work bridges photography, mixed media, and archival research to interrogate themes of identity, education, extremism, and migration. Between 2014 and 2020, she documented the rise of Boko Haram in northeast Nigeria, exploring the intersection of radicalisation and the aftermath of conflict. Ating began exploring mixed media art to address ethical concerns surrounding photography and experiment with self-portraits. Her work has been exhibited locally and internationally. Presently, she is a Ph.D. student at Cardiff University, and her research examines human rights discourse through archival images.About Omenka GalleryOmenka Gallery is a leading art gallery in Nigeria and Africa, representing a fine selection of established and emerging contemporary Nigerian and international artists working in diverse media.With a particular focus on ensuring a sustainable presence for Nigerian and African art within a larger global context, Omenka regularly participates in major international art events like Art Dubai, UAE; The Armory Show, New York; the Joburg Art Fair; Cape Town Art Fair; Cologne Paper Art; LOOP, Barcelona; the London Art Fair and 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair, London.Omenka also offers to its esteemed clients a range of advisory services, including appraisals, collections management, training and professional development, and art finance, as well as industry reports and due diligence. Our in-depth knowledge is drawn from our diverse backgrounds built over 22 years of running and managing one of the leading galleries on the continent, consulting for other important galleries, auction houses and museums, and participating in prestigious events all over the world.In association with Revilo, Omenka has an active publications programme and produces exquisite catalogues with informed, scholarly texts to accompany its schedule of solo, group and large themed exhibitions, through which it stimulates critical thought and discourse centred on contemporary art development in Nigeria, as well as Africa and its diaspora. 
Article courtesy Omenka Gallery

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