Ameh Egwuh (born 1996) is an artist whose paintings are characterized by a fascination with the line.
His lines draw inspiration from the scarification techniques of ancient Ife art — striated grooves etched onto faces — as well as Adinkra, and Nsibidi signs, which are indigenous pictograms and aphorisms. Employing these pre-colonial art traditions while referencing contemporary art history, his works invite the viewer into expansive, multi-layered worlds from the familiar to the surreal, presenting us with intimate casual scenes of play and rest as well as fantasy images of transcendence.
Exploring themes of home and familial responsibilities, solitude, identity and duality as well as death and the afterlife, Egwuh utilizes multiple modes of representation from expressionistic painting techniques to geometric patterns — drawn from textile designs from his hometown, Idoma in Benue state — in representing form and space. His eclectic visual vocabulary conveys varying textures of lives lived and spaces occupied.
Ameh Egwuh studied Fine and Applied Art at Delta State University, Abraka, Delta State. In 2019 he participated in the inaugural edition of Rele Arts Foundation’s Young Contemporaries Bootcamp and was selected in 2020 as part of Rele Arts Foundation Young Contemporaries.
The first part of his debut solo show Life After Life opened at Rele Gallery, Los Angeles in April 2021 and the second, Fantasies of the Other Side opened in October 2021 at Rele Gallery Lagos. The third solo It was meant to be a game opened in October 2023 at Rele Gallery Lagos.
Select group exhibitions include It's A wRap (2023), Rele Gallery, Lagos, Being Mortal (2023) Dom Museum Wien, Vienna Austria, Travels with Herodotus: A Journey Through African Cultures, (2021), Galleria Bianconi, Milan, ItsAwRAP (2021), Rele Gallery, Lagos, Generation Y, (2018), Retro Africa, Abuja.
Egwuh has also shown at art fairs such as Felix Art Fair (2023), FNB Art Joburg (2020) and South South Veza (2020). His works are included in the Jorge Perez Collection, Dom Museum Wien Collection, as well as in the Aluko & Oyebode Collection.
Egwuh lives and works in Lagos.