Eva Obodo is a Nigerian artist and academic who uses materials associated with exportation and trade histories to tell stories about his country. His primary materials are charcoal, aluminium wire, jute sacks and text elements that he pieces together through processes of binding, weaving, wrapping and tying. The materials are heavy with association and memory; they are mundane, yet symbolically charged. Eva Obodo accesses the emotive voice of the materials with which he works; his practice is powerful and moving, sensitive and cerebral. He works with layers and layers of stories; individual units that make up a collection — much like a population itself, or narratives that form a national history. In these works, each singular piece of charcoal has been sourced, scrubbed and parcelled in aluminium wire. The works have been quietly embellished with discreet text elements and cartographic details. These works are landscapes of memory; abstract maps for a nation charred by the wealth of it natural resources, an archive of blemished history. Each artwork sings a song of remembrance; and sounds out the unrecorded stories of anonymous voices. The works are lyrical and abstract, Eva Obodo is a master of poetic sensitivity, scattering constellations of small details through the pieces that render them infinitely interesting.

Eva Obodo holds an MFA and a PhD from the Department of Fine and Applied Arts, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and presently teaches sculpture and art education at the same university. He was formerly a lecturer at Benue State Polytechnic, Ugbokolo, where he taught art history, sculpture and drawing for several years before joining the University of Nigeria. Obodo has recently been shortlisted for the Norval Sovereign African Art Prize 2025. His works have been featured at the Investec Cape Town Art Fair (2025) with Art Formes Gallery, at Untitled Art (2024) and 1-54 New York (2024) with AFIKARIS Gallery. Obodo has been the subject of numerous solo and group exhibitions and has participated in several international group exhibitions, including the Osaka Trienniale (Japan) and DAK’ART (Senegal) and was the recipient of the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship Award in 2013.