Ada Udechukwu

Biography

Ada Udechukwu made her drawings on clothing in a restrained linear manner, and it was apparently from this activity that her path into the visual arts began. Before it came her studies in literature.

She was born in Enugu, in south-eastern Nigeria, to an Igbo father and an American mother. When the war over the secession of Biafra began in 1967, her mother took the children to Michigan, while her father stayed in Nigeria. They returned in 1971, a year after the war ended. At the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, she studied English and literature; her teacher was the writer Chinua Achebe. She took her bachelor’s degree, by one account, in 1981, while by another the year is not given. She then began painting designs on fabric and making clothing designs, executed in a restrained line. In 1988 she began drawing on paper in ink and watercolour. These sheets are more personal than the rest of her work: in them she tried to reconcile in herself the woman and the artist. Another of her themes is the complexity of multicultural and intercultural identity, inside Africa and outside it. She is associated with the Nsukka group, and remains one of the few women among its members. I think her mixed background and childhood years in two countries matter here, but, as far as one can tell, she herself does not state a direct connection.

Literature in her life ran alongside drawing. She is first of all a poet, and also a well-regarded writer of short stories. In 1993 the publisher Boomerang Press brought out her book of poems and drawings, “Woman, Me”. In 1995 came the children’s book “Herero”. Her story “Night Bus” was printed in the fiction issue of The Atlantic in August 2006.

In 1997, when Nigeria was under a military dictatorship, her husband, the artist Obiora Udechukwu, accepted a teaching position at St. Lawrence University in upstate New York. Together they left for the United States and have lived there ever since. Ada Udechukwu’s work is in the collection of the Newark Museum of Art.