NIGERIA - Ada Udechukwu (b.1960) from Enugu, Nigeria is an established artist and poet who has exhibited widely, including the National Museum of African Art in Washington, DC. Simon Ottenberg features her in the book New Traditions from Nigeria: Seven Artists of The Nsukka Group (1997). Inspired by the Igbo Uli symbols of Eastern Nigeria, traditionally used in body painting, her delicate forms reverberate with strength and rhythm. Her goal has been to restrain design within boundaries while creating the illusion of unrestrained motion, interfacing lines with space. Ada likes to use gradations achieved with black ink and washes and variations of browns and blues because she feels the power of “color” is in tone and texture. The limited palate allows her to explore the nuances that are the essence of her work. Her subject matter is very personal, mainly focusing on human relationships and the emotions that arise from them. Offering discusses the bonds between mother and child. In Ada’s words, “The child is given to the mother as an offering and she in turn must release her child.” Breeding speaks about the relationship between man and woman, including “duality … navigating a dual heritage.” Cracks is a soft charcoal with a loud message, showing how easily, and tragically, divisions can appear between two people. Ada says, “Within the walls of our inner being, what is released slips from the cracks.” Within This Landscape deviates a bit from the usual palate and speaks to the configuration of one’s life, the movement from place to place and phase to phase, all interlocking. Rivers Between Us, the boldest of her five pieces in this exhibit and the only collage piece, incorporates strips of faces in the center of the work, providing many symbolic inferences. Ada says it depicts, ”The nature of distance - within time and space, and how this affects one’s internal and external lives.”