Navigating between Lagos and Port Harcourt, Marietta transforms her mixed heritage and lived experiences into work that is as introspective as it is quietly audacious. Okechukwu Uwaezuoke writes
There is something gently disarming about Marietta Binaebi Schulze—also known, perhaps with a hint of mischief, as One Lazy Artist. Perhaps it is the way her work sidesteps grandstanding while quietly asking the big questions. Or perhaps it is an intelligence worn lightly, with humour never far from the surface and seriousness allowed to breathe without becoming self-important.
Born in Kaduna in 1995 to a Nigerian mother and a German father, Marietta grew up inhabiting a body that was already a conversation—sometimes polite, sometimes less so. Identity, for her, was not a given but a puzzle, and art became the table on which the pieces could be spread out, rearranged, debated, and occasionally thrown across the room for effect. Drawing, especially, was her first language: a way of saying this is who I am, this is what I want, this is what keeps me awake. If home is where the heart is, then creatively hers is wherever someone is willing to look, listen, and lean in.
There was, as there often is, a moment of reckoning. Fresh out of Zamani College in Kaduna, science student credentials neatly tucked under her arm, Marietta was poised to study dentistry at the University of Lagos. The grades were there, the admission secured, the sensible path laid out like a well-lit corridor. And then—she stopped. Froze, really. Intuition, that less-often-heeded yet infallible guide, whispered that this would be a terrible mistake. Into the pause floated the remembered voice of her mother’s friend, an art teacher, who once said—without drama, without doubt—you are going to become an artist. Not a suggestion, more a statement of fact. Faced with that clarity, Dentistry didn’t stand a chance. She switched to creative arts, less a rebellion than a homecoming.
Since then, her path has been marked by moments of quiet affirmation rather than spectacle. Two significant group exhibitions—Becoming: A History of the Future at Terra Kulture, Lagos (2021), and Clearing the Air! At Moriri Gallery, Port Harcourt (2022)—did something quietly profound: they told her she belonged. Not someday, not eventually, but now. A residency at The Artist Ladder Konnect (TALK) in 2021 deepened this understanding. Beyond mentors and friendships, it offered catharsis, a loosening of the grip of imposter syndrome. One art therapy session, in particular, left its mark, teaching the radical lesson of letting go—of trusting creativity to flow like life itself, provided one remembers how to tap in.
Looking across Marietta’s body of work is like eavesdropping on a mind in conversation with itself. Satisfaction sits alongside restlessness. Questions recur, circle, refuse to be neatly answered: Is there anything truly new left to make? How far can I push my own mind? Do I want to shock—and if I do, can I live with the fallout? These are not the anxieties of someone chasing novelty for its own sake, but of an artist driven by purpose. She wants to inspire, provoke dialogue, influence gently but persistently. Her real task, as she sees it, is learning how to move forward without fear.
Materially, she is both loyal and curious. Graphite—pencils—remain her comfort zone, their quiet intimacy perfectly suited to introspection. But rigidity does not mean stagnation. She paints with words through video, stitches narratives into fabric through sewing and crochet, experiments with leather, flirts with digital painting. Her process often begins long before any mark is made: a conversation overheard, a place passed through, an image imagined and reimagined until it insists on being distilled into a visible form. Only then does pencil meet paper.
Places, memories, people—all have a habit of slipping into her work unannounced. Meaning reveals itself late, sometimes weeks or months after completion, like a footnote written by the subconscious. One of the pleasures she takes in revisiting old pieces is discovering new dialogues, fresh revelations, and subtle echoes she hadn’t noticed before.
Lately, fashion has entered the chat—and it suits her. A recent collaboration with designer Lisa Folawiyo for the 20th-anniversary collection Capturing A Life in Colour (COLL 1, 2026) saw Marietta paint hyper-realistic ankara patterns onto leather, collapsing boundaries between art, craft, and couture. The experience unlocked something: the thrill of collaboration, the promise of shared language. She is eager now to see where that energy leads, whether in dialogue with others or in the solitude of her own studio.
Living and working between Lagos and Port Harcourt, Marietta continues to navigate a world that both questions and shapes her sense of place. Her race-less, otherworldly figures—drawn from her mixed heritage, from women, astronomy, nature, and the vast terrain of human emotion—stand as quiet refusals of easy categorisation. For her, life itself is the masterpiece: something to be grown, nurtured, and beautified in service of others. In an increasingly self-serving world, her work insists on emotional intelligence, compassion, and the radical act of lifting one another up.
It is not loud art. It does not shout. But like the best reviews, the best songs, the best lives, it lingers—asking the viewer, gently but firmly, to pay attention.
