City of Ife

In City of Ife, Wura-Natasha Ogunji applies ink, graphite, collage, and embroidery to architectural tracing paper. Taking advantage of the transparency and movement inherent within the tracing paper, Ogunji works on both sides of the medium, purposefully leaving knots, distortions, and hanging threads visible. “There’s something so poetic about the simplicity of that underside and the weight of the mistakes that I find gorgeous and also intriguing,” the artist said.

Daily life in Nigeria—Ogunji’s ancestral and adopted home—often influences the themes and motifs of the artist’s drawings and performance works. Here, the Nigerian city of Ife is referenced in the work’s title and replicated in the map that swirls around the central figure like hair.