Queenette Ebong: Merging Nsibidi Symbols with Modern African Art
Queenette Ebong is a Nigerian multidimensional artist whose work weaves together painting, experimental media, textile design, and bleach art to explore themes of memory, identity, and culture. Her approach is rooted in a deep respect for African traditions, yet she constantly pushes boundaries, merging the old with the new. With a strong background in both sculpture and painting, she creates visually and conceptually layered works that challenge perception, spark dialogue, and preserve cultural narratives.
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Queenette Ebong
22 abr 2025
22/4/25
Born in 1995, Queenette Ebong is the first of three children from the Ibibio tribe in Etinan LGA, Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria. She began her education at Bellina Nursery and Primary School and later completed her secondary education at Our Lady of Apostles Secondary School in 2012.
Her passion for art emerged early, nurtured by her parents and art teacher, Mr. Austin Umoh. From 2013 to 2016, she studied Sculpture and Ceramics at the Federal College of Education (Technical), Akoka, earning an NCE Double Major. This laid the foundation for her textural, sculptural painting style and her teaching career at St. Finbarr’s College (2016–2019), where she mentored young artists.
Seeking further growth, she pursued a B.A. in Creative Arts (Visual) at the University of Lagos, graduating with First Class Honors in 2024. During her studies, she gained hands-on experience through internships and exchanges:
In 2021, she trained with photographer Kelechi Amadi-Obi through SIWES, honing her visual storytelling skills.
In 2022, she participated in the first HFBK/UNILAG art exchange exhibition.
In 2023, she worked at Triad Studios with Otunba Dotun Alabi, deepening her expertise in studio production and large-scale works.
After graduation, she was selected for the Art School Alliance (ASA) exchange program at the University of Fine Arts (HFBK) Hamburg, Germany (Oct 2024–Feb 2025), where she explored new materials, collaborative practices, and artistic methodologies.
Queenette Ebong’s work explores African heritage through a contemporary lens, drawing heavily from Nsibidi—an ancient symbolic writing system of the Ibibio, Efik, Igbo, and Ejagham peoples. By incorporating these motifs, she weaves stories that preserve and reimagine underrepresented cultural histories.
Her bleach art technique, which involves removing color from fabric to reveal intricate patterns, serves as a metaphor for erasure, memory, and rediscovery—echoing the fragmented telling of African histories. Working across painting, sculpture, mixed media, and textiles, her layered, symbolic works invite viewers to engage beyond the surface.
Queenette’s work has been featured in both local and international exhibitions and collaborations, including:
2019: #sisterART Exhibition (Terra Kulture), Thorns and Blossoms Workshop (Hungarian Embassy, 2nd place), Glitz, Glamour & Explore Exhibition
2020: #sisterART Online Exhibition
2022: Ibom Arts & Book Festival; HFBK/UNILAG Exchange
2023: #sisterART Manchester Exhibition; +234 Art Workshop (Grant Writing); Mural at UNILAG Main Library; Total Energies Open House
2024–2025: ASA Open Studios and International Exhibition (Hamburg)
She also contributed as a research art historian to a Ph.D. thesis on African visual heritage at the University of British Columbia.
For Queenette, art is a dialogue with the past, present, and future, rooted in storytelling, cultural preservation, and innovation. With each piece, she reclaims African narratives, ensures their relevance, and positions herself as a visual historian shaping global conversations around African identity.
"I am a storyteller, but my stories do not unfold in sentences—they emerge through pigments, textures, and symbols. My work is an excavation of memory, identity, and culture, where history is not merely depicted but unearthed. Using painting, experimental media, and bleach art, I carve out narratives that oscillate between tradition and reinvention.
With roots in sculpture and ceramics, my paintings defy the flatness of the canvas. I sculpt with paint, build with texture, and weave mixed media into my compositions, transforming each piece into a tangible dialogue between past and present. Nsibidi—the sacred script of the Ibibio, Efik, Igbo, and Ejagham—flows through my work, not as decoration, but as a language of resilience, a bridge between generations.
I create not to illustrate history but to make it felt. Each stroke is a question; each mark, an invitation. My art does not seek to preserve culture as a relic but to activate it, to make it breathe in a world that too often forgets. In a time of erasure and reinvention, I choose to remember—and to reimagine."
"The past does not speak in words, but in symbols waiting to be understood."– Queenette Ebong