In Mary-Jane Ohobu’s work, light refuses to settle, shadow remains unapologetic, and contrast emerges not as visual drama but as a way of seeing—rooted in instinct, culture, and the lived knowledge of the body.
Okechukwu Uwaezuoke writes
Life, Mary-Jane Ohobu learnt early enough, does not move in straight lines; it unfolds in rhythms—quiet, sudden, and recurring. It was a lesson absorbed in Calabar, the Cross River State capital, where her childhood oscillated between long stretches of calm and moments of vivid eruption. “There was a lot of calm,” she recalls—trees everywhere, quiet mornings, strong family structure—” and then moments where everything came alive.” Culture, in that setting, was never peripheral. It coursed through daily life with ease and authority. Festivals, ceremonies, and communal gatherings arrived in waves of colour and sound, making it clear that tradition was not an abstract inheritance but a lived condition. “Tradition wasn’t something you read about,” she says. “You lived it.”
In that environment, light was never still. It slipped through leaves, glanced off water, lingered momentarily on skin during celebrations, then drifted on. Shadow followed without threat or drama. “Shadow wasn’t negative; it was just part of the scene.” That early familiarity with change—with light continually pressing against darkness—has carried into Ohobu’s work with an unforced assurance. “That’s why, in my work now, light and shadow feel very natural to me,” she says. “They remind me of home, of how culture moves gently most of the time, and loudly when it needs to.”
That instinctive grounding also explains her path as an autodidact. Ohobu’s artistic language emerged not from formal classrooms but from lived observation. “Teaching myself meant learning the way I grew up—by watching, trying, failing, and trying again.” Freed from institutional pressure, she allowed intuition to lead. “There wasn’t pressure to ‘get it right’ based on someone else’s rules. I followed instinct first.” Over time, that instinct hardened into method. What emerged was a practice shaped less by permission than by curiosity—”a way of working shaped by culture, not formal approval.”
Her movement into makeup as a serious artistic medium followed a similar logic of recognition rather than rebellion. Long before it became professional, Ohobu had already witnessed the power of adornment within tradition. “Growing up, I had already seen how markings, presentation, and adornment played roles during ceremonies, rites, and celebrations.” Viewed through this lens, makeup revealed itself not as cosmetic excess but as cultural continuity. “When I looked at makeup through that lens, it made sense. It wasn’t new; it was familiar.” It became, for her, “a way to tell stories, express identity, and connect to heritage”—art that lives on skin, moves through space, and refuses permanence.
Working on the human body, however, demands a different ethics. “You’re dealing with someone’s presence, their comfort, their story,” Ohobu notes. “That means listening and respecting boundaries.” Yet the body also introduces an irreducible freedom. “The body responds, moves, reacts. It brings its own energy into the work.” The result is collaboration rather than control—and an acceptance that ephemerality does not diminish meaning. “It also reminds me that not everything needs to last forever to matter.”
Colour has long been a defining force in Ohobu’s practice, bold and unapologetic. Which is why her Ardhi collection, stripped entirely to black and white, feels like a deliberate recalibration rather than a retreat. “Ardhi came from a need to return to basics,” she explains. “In many traditions, simplicity is powerful.” The absence of colour sharpened attention. “Removing colour forced me to focus on form, texture, and emotion.” Constraint became clarity. “Sometimes saying less can say more.”
Light and shadow, recurring insistently, refuse to remain merely technical concerns. “They’re definitely more than visual tools,” Ohobu insists. In cultural terms, they mirror what is publicly celebrated and what is quietly borne. “They help me speak to both.” Identity itself operates within this tension—”what we show proudly and what we’re still understanding.” The balance is intimate, unresolved, and deeply familiar.
African heritage pulses unmistakably through her work, yet Ohobu resists the demand to perform it. “I grew up understanding that tradition is living, not frozen. It changes as people change.” To honour it is to engage its spirit, not rehearse its surfaces. “I don’t feel the need to perform Africanness in a certain way. My work is African because I am African.” In that assertion lies both freedom and refusal.
What accumulates across her practice feels like an archive of bodies, emotions, gestures remembered rather than recorded. Ohobu describes herself not as originator but as conduit. “The stories already exist—in culture, in people, in memory. My role is to listen and find a visual way to express them.” This act of translation has been deepened through collaboration, particularly with photographer Hakeem Salaam, whose presence she describes as “integral to the journey.” Sometimes the work feels like storytelling, sometimes like witnessing—but always, at its core, “translating lived experience into something others can connect with.”
Looking ahead, Ohobu imagines a future defined by permeability rather than proclamation. “I hope my work continues to blur lines—between art and beauty, tradition and modern expression.” Accessibility matters deeply. “I want people to feel that creativity is accessible, not intimidating.” Within Nigeria, especially, she hopes her practice encourages a loosening of constraints around identity and self-expression. “If it helps people see beauty and art as tools for confidence, storytelling, and ownership,” she reflects, “then I’m on the right path.”
In Mary-Jane Ohobu’s work, light does not conquer shadow; it converses with it. Tradition does not stand still; it moves—sometimes softly, sometimes in full voice—carrying with it a world of possibilities already unfolding.
