When asked to describe his body of work, Samuel Nnorom spoke in a serene, yet confident tone, employing three qualifiers: engaging, mesmerizing, and self-questioning. Carefully chosen, strong and thought-provoking, the terms have in common the purpose of evoking not so much the physical aspect of his abstract fabric murals as qualities inextricably linked to the subjective experience of the viewer standing before them. Indeed, Samuel Nnorom’s large-scale sculptures engage the mind, mesmerize with their swirling compositions and prompt viewers to find themselves self-questioning what is to be seen – a landscape, sinuous paths, a crowd seen from above or even a face? – as much as what is to be understood about the piece.

Visually describing Nnorom’s work often requires drawing on the lexical field of flora. Spreading out like vines along the walls, the artist’s rhizomatic, web-like sculptures seem to literally catch the viewer's eye. Resembling constellations in motion, his abstract sculptures have neither a beginning nor an end; the eye encounters sky blues, forest greens and lemon yellows, loses itself in their immensity, whirling and wandering through the labyrinth drawn by the young artist’s needle, threads, and scraps of Ankara fabric. A few words regarding Nnorom’s use of Ankara – also known as African wax print, Vlisco-cloth or Holland print – must be shared. It inevitably brings to mind the famous usage of Yinka Shonibare, whose work Samuel Nnorom attributes a key influence in his work – the latter also having been fortunate enough to be a Fellowship resident at his renowned Lagos-based residence. Sharing a similar approach to Shonibare’s, the young artist is deeply interested in the social statement contained in wax fabric.