Today, Sunday, March 8, 2026, the global community honors women’s accomplishments while reflecting on the challenges they continue to face. This year, IWD is celebrated under two distinct yet complementary themes:
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“Rights. Justice. Action. For ALL Women and Girls” – a call to dismantle structural barriers, such as discriminatory laws and weak legal protections, to ensure equality for all women and girls. The theme emphasizes defending the rule of law and ending impunity.
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“Give to Gain” – highlighting the transformative power of investment, mentorship, and collaboration. It underscores that empowering women is not charity but a strategic, smart investment: when society invests in women, everyone benefits.
To bring these themes closer to home in Nigeria, we spotlight some of the nation’s most impactful female visual artists—women using their craft to defend, mentor, and empower others, while shaping society through creative expression.
Angela Amami Isiuwe
Angela Amami Isiuwe is one of Nigeria’s foremost artists, renowned for her mastery of oil, acrylic, and watercolor. Her work often centers on female subjects, reframing women’s experiences as central to society and highlighting both their successes and struggles. In doing so, she presents women with the dignity and complexity historically reserved for men—an especially significant act in Nigeria’s patriarchal context.
Isiuwe’s artistic approach embraces minimalism and intentionality, exploring how deliberate expression shapes self and social identity. Her swiftly rendered freehand linear figures evoke emotion and embrace the power of solitude—a metaphor for freedom and introspection.
Her practice interprets the meditative act of processing pain and releasing turbulent emotions. The linear form studies body structure, movement, and language, inviting viewers to engage emotionally and interpret meaning personally. Her works have been exhibited both in Nigeria and internationally, earning acclaim for their depth and subtle power.
Deborah Segun
Born in 1994, Deborah Segun is a Lagos-based multidisciplinary artist who trained at the Polimoda Institute of Fashion Design and Marketing in Florence, Italy, graduating in 2017. During her fashion studies, she translated her artistic vision into conceptual, sculptural wearable pieces.
Her works are primarily figurative, with a distinctive blend of cubism and abstraction. Segun celebrates the female form through voluptuous figures captured in graceful poses, creating a lyrical, refreshing visual language. Her debut in the art market in 2017 has quickly established her as one of Africa’s female artists on the rise.
Segun takes a playful, purist approach, focusing on form over detail, experimenting with colors and shapes to simplify complex scenarios. She often exaggerates or displaces figures and isolates shapes to create new compositions, drawing inspiration from personal experiences, shared encounters, and the spaces she inhabits. Her art is an exploration of perception, identity, and narrative through a uniquely expressive lens.
Chukwumereogo Nnenna Okeke
Born in 1989, Chukwumereogo Nnenna Okeke is a visual artist whose work interrogates gender, culture, and broader socioeconomic and political inequalities. She frequently likens the human form to landscapes, using scale, distortion, and materiality to question tradition and social norms.
Okeke works with acrylic, charcoal, pastel, and increasingly, locally sourced materials like beeswax and clay. Her textured, evolving practice draws from memory, environment, and acts of resistance.
Her recent contributions to the group exhibition Underland include pieces such as To Speak in Other Tongues (2025) and When Shall I See My Home? (2024), exploring themes of exclusion and reclamation. Through these works, Okeke positions the body as a site of resistance, using abstraction to challenge social and political inequalities.
Ashiata Shaibu-Salami
Born in 1998, Ashiata Shaibu-Salami is a contemporary mixed-media artist from Kogi State who grew up in Ibadan. Her artistic journey is driven by a desire to communicate freedom—the freedom to express, live, and dream.
Ashiata’s work spans painting, mixed-media collages, impasto, sponging, and paper and picture transfers. Influenced by her love of writing, music, and travel, her art explores the human mind, emotional growth, and the unseen layers of self.
Her practice invites quiet reflection on personal and shared journeys, capturing the rawness of internal struggle and the subtle beauty of self-examination. Ashiata’s work encourages viewers to pause, consider, and connect with the deeper dimensions of human experience.
