EKENE EMEKA-MADUKA

Conceived as a cohesive narrative arc, this new body of work by Ekene Emeka-Maduka (Nigeria, b. 1996) unfolds within the fictional architecture of a Nigerian boarding school, a system she once inhabited, rendered here as a condensed model of society.

Drawing on adolescence as a formative and globally legible stage, the artist constructs a narrative that resists autobiography: rather than an illustration of lived experience, the exhibition presents a multitemporal memory palace shaped by unreliable recollection and shared imaginaries. References to Lord of the Flies and Things Fall Apart surface as dissonant literary inheritances, refracted through the lens of a postcolonial education.

Across a series of paintings and works on paper, developed in part during a residency in Switzerland, Ekene traces how structures of authority and invention take shape within enclosed environments. Between discipline and improvisation, control and play, the works open a space to reflect on how identities are rehearsed, negotiated, and collectively imagined.

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