We speak of 'social fabric' as a metaphor, a shorthand for the threads that bind people into community.
For visual artist Samuel Nnorom, that fabric is also literal: Ankara, the colorful cotton wax print common across West Africa. In Samuel’s work, Ankara textiles become sculptural forms that mirror the entanglements of human connection, tied into knots that hold and seams that give shape. Ankara itself also carries its own layered narrative. “The material has gone through a lot of transitions,” Nnorom explains. “So the work becomes about migration. About relationships. About people, and identity, and connectivity.”
At NeueHouse Madison Square, two of his sculptures anchor WOVEN, an exhibition meditating on connection across cultures, generations, and materials. The show brings together diasporic voices, artists that thread memory, resilience, and community into form. Below, the artist-in-residence chats with NeueJournal about craft, collaboration, and the philosophy behind his work.
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NeueJournal: How did working with fabric and other materials become central to your practice?
Samuel Nnorom: I grew up in a space where craft was valued from a very young age. My dad was a shoe cobbler, my mom a tailor. I was always making—knitting, sewing, crocheting, even baking. That challenge of working with my hands contributed immensely to my development as an artist. After school, I felt a need to express myself. I needed a personal voice, a language that was local to me but also, in a sense, global. I asked myself: How do I make art that is authentic? What do I want to say? I started experimenting with materials from my dad’s workshop—the leather, the rubber—and fabrics from my mom’s workshop. The fabric made more sense to me. It feels real. It contains what I want to say about identity, connection, and humanity. Fabric is universal. It connects people. It’s just mind-blowing.
NJ: Can you talk a little bit about how you’re exploring the idea of community through these woven tapestries?
Samuel Nnorom: The material itself informs the work. Ankara has undergone many transitions—it has traveled further than almost any other material because of its colonial history. It originated in Indonesia, was industrialized in Europe, then brought to Africa, where African motifs transformed it into African fabric. Later, mass production in Asia and American diaspora use expanded its reach. It has a global origin and a global life.
For me, the work talks about people and connectivity. It talks about migration, identity, and how you can remain true to your identity even while maintaining another nationality. Beyond the history of the fabric itself, I work with community members here in Nsukka. We make the art together. African art traditionally values communal creation: you don’t say a piece was produced by one person—you say it was produced by a community. My work continues that conversation about communality.
NJ: So you bring people into the studio to help create the pieces?
Yes, it’s a community-based art, where individuals make the bubbles themselves. It’s funny, I can tell which studio assistant or any community member has made which bubbles, because they stitch their passion, their personality, their emotions in it. The art transcends beyond art that we know, to something that is historical in nature. Something that carries people and personalities and can cross to the other side of the world. Collectors or museums or institutions that own them then carry the personalities. I tend to see my work from the the perspective of its history, from how it’s been made, from the meaning of the material, the social fabric that cuts across regions, where culture, norms, values are all being stitched together.
How do you think about the role of art in the world?
Art is a form of spiritual exercise. It connects me with with other humans. It connects me ideas. Art is a way to communicate. That’s why I welcome lot of people in my studio— it’s having that place where you have exchange of ideas; where people give themselves into this practice of creation. It’s spiritual, in a sense. I’ve always wanted people to see beyond the physical. To see not just the material, but see the the amount of time and effort that goes into these, and the way all the bubble forms are connected.
The idea of connection has been my focal point, either in the spiritual realm or in the physical realm. In a way, I want people to see themselves as the bubbles. I want them to see themselves as being part of a community. Sometimes when you look at one of my pieces, it might remind you of a map— either it could be map of the world, map of any continent, or map of a community. I want people to see themselves as being part of that community, part of that existentialism, part of that connection, part of existence.
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