Mother
Tongue

Mother Tongue is the first solo exhibition by Lagos-based painter Ifeoma Okoli, comprising twenty-three oil portraits of women who speak Igbo as a first language and have spent most of their adult lives somewhere else.

Okoli found each sitter through her mother’s church network, through cousins, through a single Facebook post that circulated for one week in 2024. She visited each woman at least twice. She painted them from memory. None of them have seen their portraits yet.

“Recognition is a public act,” Okoli has said. “It has to be witnessed.” On opening night, each sitter will see her portrait for the first time — at the same moment as everyone else in the room.