At 75 Mama Nike Still Stitches Worlds Together

At 75, Chief Nike Davies-Okundaye remains what she has always been — a restless cultural force stitching together art, memory and identity across continents in indigo-dyed threads. Okechukwu Uwaezuoke reports 

If Chief Nike Davies-Okundaye stands out at cultural gatherings as one of the Nigerian art scene’s most recognisable figures, it is first because of her large fan-like gélé — that elegantly wrapped Yoruba head-tie which, over the decades, has become almost as iconic as the woman herself. Then there is the warmth she exudes: the irrepressible laughter, the relaxed sociability, the animated conversations punctuated by sweeping gestures. Around her lingers the unmistakable sense of someone for whom art is not merely profession, but second nature. Indeed, the woman fondly called “Mama Nike” wears culture with the same effortless ease with which others don their favourite fabric.

It makes sense, therefore, that this matriarch of the Nigerian art community — who marked her 75th birthday yesterday, May 23 — recently led a contingent of 13 Nigerian artists to the US for Threads of Heritage: A Cultural Confluence Connecting Africa to Atlanta. The event, an ambitious cultural diplomacy initiative, officially opened on May 15 after pre-event activities began on May 6. Organised by Fulton County Arts and Culture under Commissioner Robb Pitts and director David Manuel, alongside Georgia State Representative Kim Schofield, the programme combines exhibitions, workshops, artist talks, youth engagement projects, HBCU (Historically Black College or University) collaborations, masquerade performances, dance, cuisine and other communal rituals of cultural exchange.

Perhaps the timing of the Atlanta event was deliberately arranged to dovetail neatly into her 75th birthday celebrations. Still, in the case of the effervescent woman fondly called Mama Nike, 75 years seem only to have enlarged the almost mythic aura surrounding her presence. Even the title of the Atlanta initiative sounds autobiographical. Threads have, after all, always run through her life — threads of indigo, memory, displacement, survival and inheritance.

The exhibition features artists such as Shayee Awoyomi, Lasaki Olubunmi, Adeleke Akeem, Ola Balogun, Ajibade Awoyemi, Bimbo Samson Adenugba, Ade Odunfa, Owolabi Ayodele, Nduka F. Onyia, Doba Afolabi, Folami Olanrewaju Razaq, Mukaila Ayoade and Fatoye Ifalowo. Yet, even amid this impressive constellation of talents, Mama Nike remains the exhibition’s emotional centre of gravity.

She speaks about the initiative with the conviction of someone weary of seeing Nigerian art treated as an exotic sidebar to “mainstream” global culture. According to her, the agreement for the project had been signed as far back as 2018 before logistical setbacks and embassy closures delayed its realisation. Still, she sees Atlanta as merely the beginning. If sustained, she believes the platform could evolve into a larger diasporic crossroads for African creativity.

That idea — art as bridgework across oceans and histories — has quietly defined much of her life. Long before “cultural diplomacy” became fashionable policy jargon, Mama Nike had already been practising it in indigo, batik and human generosity.

Textile artist Shayee Awoyomi, who coordinates the project’s youth and HBCU engagement programming, describes the initiative as an opportunity to reconnect cultural circuits within the African diaspora long fragmented by migration and institutional neglect. Nigerian visual art, she argues, opened global doors decades ago, although inadequate infrastructure and weak collaboration have prevented it from fully translating visibility into lasting cultural and economic power.

What makes Mama Nike’s story compelling is not merely the scale of her achievements, but the difficult terrain she crossed to attain them. Before the fame and museums, there was the little girl from Ogidi-Ijumu who lost her mother at six and her grandmother a year later. Raised by her great-grandmother — the head of all the craftswomen in the community — she learnt weaving, indigo-dyeing and adire-making not in classrooms, but around dye pits and woven fabrics amid the rhythms of women’s conversations.

Art already ran through the family bloodstream. Her mother had been an artist. So too was the aunt who later helped raise her, while her father, Nicholas, is described by Kofo Adeleke in Mama Nike’s biography, Bàtà Mi A Dùn Kò Kò Ká (My Shoes Will Make a Clapping Sound), as “a skilled artisan with many talents.”

Circumstance, however, forced clarity upon the young girl’s ambitions. When lack of funds cut short her formal education, she refused resignation. At 14, rather than submit to marriage to a polygamous junior government minister, she fled home with a friend named Justina and joined a travelling theatre group. Reckless perhaps, but decisive. The move also set her on the road to Osogbo, then emerging as a magnet for artistic experimentation.

Osogbo changed everything. There, she immersed herself in indigo-dyeing and adire-making through the informal art school established by Ulli and Georgina Beier. Yet even within that bohemian artistic circle, her entrepreneurial instincts surfaced early. “My first gallery was in my bedroom and I called it ‘Africa No. 1 Shop’,” Kofo Adeleke quotes her as saying.

Osogbo also brought her into the orbit of the late charismatic artist Twins Seven-Seven — Omoba Taiwo Olaniyi Oyewale-Toyeje Oyelale Osuntoki — whose flamboyant persona loomed large over the movement. Their relationship led to marriage, though life within the famously crowded household proved far from harmonious.

Soon, fate was pulling her away with remarkable momentum. In 1974, she was selected among 10 African artists invited to teach traditional weaving in the US. The trip — her first outside Nigeria — exposed her to museums, international audiences and techniques such as quilt-making. 

Fame followed almost incidentally. She became a favourite among expatriate collectors and moved within circles that included the late Afrobeat icon Fela Anikulapo-Kuti. Yet celebrity alone does not explain her stature. 

What distinguishes Mama Nike is the way philanthropy and artistic practice became inseparable in her life.Through her art centres in Lagos, Osogbo, Abuja and Ogidi, she has trained thousands of young Nigerians free of charge in visual, musical and performing arts. For many young people with few opportunities, those centres became places where talent was noticed, encouraged and given room to grow.

Meanwhile, her own works continued travelling into major global collections. Her myth-infused figurative paintings, shaped by Yoruba cosmology and the Osogbo aesthetic, have captivated audiences since her 1968 solo exhibition at Goethe-Institut Lagos. Already in 2012, her works have entered collections such as the Smithsonian Institution, the British Library and the Gallery of African Art in London, alongside numerous public and private collections worldwide, including that of former US vice-president Walter Mondale.

Not a mean achievement, perhaps, for the little girl from Ogidi-Ijumu who once ran her first gallery out of a bedroom.