Over 30 contemporary and colourful works by well-established Nigerian artists are giving visitors to the Cavalieri Art Hotel in St Julian’s a glimpse of the African country’s customs and culture.

Madu Chimezie

Co-organised by local artist Joseph Barbara and Bruno Eke of Simpli International, a Maltese-registered travel and tourism solutions company in Nigeria, the exhibition is dedicated to the survivors of cyclone Idai in association with the United Nations.

The cyclone, which formed in March, was one of the worst tropical cyclones on record to affect Africa and the Southern Hemisphere, with over 1,000 fatalities.

Eight artists are taking part, all of whom have their own distinct style and interpret different subjects. However, Mr Barbara says that their styles are very similar to those of their European counterparts.

“The exhibition strikes me because although Nigerian art is different from Western and European art, the artists use the same techniques and styles,” Mr Barbara said.

Ella Onyebe

Bona Ezuedu is an experimental artist famous for his ever-shifting stylistic explorations and the multi-award-winning artist Oswald Anayo Uruakpa uses a realistic expressionism style to express his inner world.

Kolapo Olorunyemi is a self-taught oil, charcoal and graphite artist whose abstract realism works are concerned with human connections, while Ella Onyebe is a creative arts graduate who works on mixed media, including canvas, ceramics and wall murals.

Hyper realist artist Olumide Oresegun’s oil paintings are inspired by his immediate environment and the people around him and realist Madu Chimezie’s large works depict events from his African custom and culture in a quasi-photographic manner.

Iniobong Charles’s abstract, sometimes colourful works are a combination of different-sized rectangles, which seem like stitched together to form a whole artwork, while sculptor Lyke Okenyi presents a hanging wall sculpture featuring tiny tribal figures.

The exhibition is being inaugurated today at the Renoir Gallery, Cavalieri Art Hotel, St Julian’s. It opens to the public tomorrow and runs until June 30. Entrance is free.

Kolapo Olorunyemi. Right: Olumide Oresegun.