Chioma Ebinama: A Spiral shell

From October 29 to December 19, Maureen Paley presents “A Spiral Shell”, the first solo gallery exhibition by Chioma Ebinama.

Chioma Ebinama (born 1988, Maryland, USA and lives and works in Athens, Greece) is a Nigerian-American artist interested in themes such as animism, mythology, and philosophy and how they are interconnected. Her practice focuses on work on paper, but in her travels, she has collaborated with local artists to make sculptures, textiles, and wearable art.

The exhibition “A Spiral Shell” takes inspiration from a short story by Italo Calvino, “The Spiral”, from the book “Cosmocomics,” and how the desire to build something drives the human will and how in the act of making we construct a protective shell against the outside world and its instability.

The exhibition stems from an unusual situation for the artist: homeless and jobless in 2019, she decided to start a journey from Mexico to Athens where she found love and stayed during the lockdown. Without family contacts and external stimuli, her artistic work starts from personal research and reflection on changes and their disruptions.