Marcellina Akpojotor’s Collaged Paintings Celebrate Motherhood and Ancestral Memory

In Marcellina Akpojotor’s painting Letters and Doodles (Kesiena’s Diary) (2021), the notebook scribbles appear to be frenetically drawn on by the artist’s eight-year-old daughter, Kesiena. Indeed, they were—Akpojotor actually asked her daughter to draw on her painting, one of their first creative collaborations.

Though not on view, the work is a precursor to Akpojotor’s first solo exhibition at Rele in London, “Joy of More Worlds,” on view until June 8th, where the Nigerian artist shows her transition from the role of the daughter—guided by her foremothers—to a mother determined to preserve this lineage through her art. This shift is evidenced in her practice: Rather than working with archival photos of the women in her family, as in her previous series, her new body of work is focused on intimate moments with her daughter as a continuation of her matrilineal history.

Growing up in Lagos, where she still lives with her family, Akpojotor was first exposed to art when she apprenticed under her father, a sign painter who introduced her to stenciling, drawing, calligraphy, and more. At home, she would draw and paint her siblings until she became bored. Then, surrounded by her mother’s discarded Ankara fabrics—a textile made in Lagos that is deeply embedded in Nigerian culture—Akpojotor decided to mix her media. “I thought I wasn’t pushing myself enough, and then the idea came [to me] to switch the materials,” she said.

“The [Ankara] fabric was very popular in the Nigerian imagination,” she said. “It’s a fabric that brings people together—sometimes you find family members, even friends, in similar outfits for different occasions, and that signals support, solidarity, and community.” In her painted portraits, she uses tiny scraps of this fabric collected from local tailors and intricately stitched to create a single, pointillist color field. These serve as symbols of identity and memory, linking generations of women with threads of shared heritage and personal history.

Each piece in “Joy of More Worlds” weaves a narrative that spans generations. One notable piece is Weekend with Grandma (2022), depicting Akpojotor’s mother with her two children, all staring at the horizon on a balcony, their figures all formed by accumulations of small fabric pieces. Here, she explores the role of motherhood through the lens of her personal experience and the tension between her role as mother and daughter.

Today, her studio in Lagos is a kaleidoscope of materials: acrylic, charcoal, and piles of colorful Ankara scraps gathered from the floors of local tailors. Her meticulous process of selecting, cutting, and piecing together these fabrics facilitates a “back and forth” with the artwork, in her words. This dialogue is symbolic, not only representing the conversation between media but also between intergenerational influences. Diatacheko’s Parlour (2022–23), for instance, portrays a lively gathering of women and girls in a family parlor, each figure rendered as a patchwork collage, popping from the flat pastel backgrounds. The family and friends featured in her paintings are amalgamations of history and the contemporary day, informed by cultural influences and personal narratives.

Akpojotor focuses on documenting the relationships surrounding her family to trace the influences that have led to her and her daughters. “I’ve become more interested in generational stories and traits—things [that] are passed down from one generation to the other because I remember my mom talking about her great-grandmother,” she said.

One trait that has been passed down her maternal line is a “quest for education,” a vital element to pass on as her two daughters, Kesiena and her three-year-old, Mimi, get older. “I see that as a legacy that she passed on because then you have the other women in the family trying to attain some level of education, trying to break that barrier of not having an education,” she added.