Tag: Nnenna Okore

Sneak Peek – Beauty is Resistance: art as antidote Opens in Less than a Month

September 24, 2025 0 Comment

The opening of our Fall 2025 “Art in the Barn” exhibition, on October 11, is just a few weeks away.

Despite headwinds from tariff confusion and new shipper policies, we have compiled an expansive group of works from Europe, Asia, and North and South America. The few examples below illustrate the breadth of ways that the artists in Beauty is Resistance have made aesthetic attractiveness a purposeful mode of expression. 

Wendy Wahl Rebound Overlap
Wendy Wahl, Rebound Overlap 2025, Photo by Tom Grotta

Twenty years ago, Wendy Wahl noticed that the printed and bound versions of encyclopedias were being disposed of at an alarming rate, and soon after, most encyclopedias were no longer obtainable in that format. Encyclopedias have existed for around 2,000 years. From the specific to the general, the encyclopaedia can be described as a summation of knowledge from a particular worldview. Wahl uses these discarded volumes to make art — such as the three pieces in this exhibition, Book Matched, Curiosity Under Fire, and Rebound Overlap — that brings awareness to what can happen when access to information is denied and discarded.

Nnenna Okore, Vogue
Nnenna Okore, Vogue, 2009. Photo by Tom Grotta

Artist, educator, and environmentalist Nnenna Okore who studied in Nigeria uses ordinary materials, repetitive processes, and varying textures to make references to everyday Nigerian practices and cultural objects. “ I am invested in changing the function, meaning, and historical or social context of my materials,” she says. “By transforming them from their original state of being and employing deconstructive and reconstructive techniques, these materials inevitably assume new lives, different personalities, and cultural significance.” 

Neha Puri Dhir, Detail of Luster of Time
Neha Puri Dhir, Detail of Luster of Time, 2023. Photo by Tom Grotta

Neha Puri Dhir’s Luster of Time reflects on the beauty of aging and the stories embedded in the passage of time. The work, which involves pleating and stitch-resist dyeing on silk, reveals delicate lines and textures that evoke the growth rings of a tree or the patina formed on weathered metal. The deep circular form at the center suggests a meditative stillness, grounding the viewer amidst the rhythmic folds. Each stitch and crease becomes a quiet testimony to memory, impermanence, and transformation. “This piece celebrates time as a collaborator,” Dhir says, “turning fabric into a canvas where aging itself becomes a mark of grace and resilience.” 

Misako Nakahira, Triptych
Misako Nakahira, Unlayered #HPO, Y, B, 2025. Photo by Tom Grotta

Masako Nakahira continues her exploration of stripes in these small but animated set of weavings. Inspired by “illusions,” a method of expression used in painting, these works are based on the theme of overlapping layers. Although this image appears to overlap visually, the layers do not actually exist in the structure. “This makes us wonder what human perception seeks between reality and illusion,” she says. “I would like to continue to question the boundary between the two through textiles.”

Join us in October to view work by these and 30+ other international artists who celebrate beauty as a form of defiance, cultural preservation, and political voice. 

Exhibition Details: Beauty is Resistance: art as antidote
October 11 – 19
browngrotta arts
276 Ridgefield Road Wilton, CT 06897 

Times:
Saturday, October 11th: 11AM to 6PM [Opening & Artist Reception] 
Sunday,  October 12th: 11AM to 6PM
Monday, October 13th through Saturday, October 18th: 10AM to 5PM
Sunday, October 19th: 11AM to 6PM [Final Day]

Schedule Your Visit

Safety Protocols: No narrow heels, please. We have barn floors.

Art Assembled: New This Week April

May 9, 2019 0 Comment
Transition, Neha Puri Dhir, resist dye, silk, 23” x 34”, 2015. Photo by Tom Grotta.

What a month! April was quite the month for us here at browngrotta arts as we hosted our once-a-year Art in the Barn exhibition art + identity: an international view. The exhibition was a great success and we are so thankful for all the support near and far. At the beginning of April, we shared pieces by Neha Puri Dhir and Paul Furneaux, both of whom are new to browngrotta arts. Dhir’s piece Zazen caught the eye of many on social media, becoming our most liked “New This Week” post to date. In recent years, Dhir has experimented with the meticulous and labor-intensive techniques of shibori (bandhini  India and adire in Nigeria. In doing so, Dhir sources all of her fabric from places all across India. As visible in Transition Dhir’s design influenced by the Japanese wabi-sabi aesthetic, which is centered on the acceptance of impermanence and imperfection. 

City Trees II and City Lights II, Paul Furneaux
Japanese woodcuts on wood , 19.5” x 40” x 4”, 2015. Photo by Tom Grotta.

      Like Dhir, Scottish artist Paul Furneaux also draws inspiration from a Japanese aesthetic. Furneaux’s works, City Trees II and City Lights II, which grace the cover of our art + identity: an international view catalog, were made using the traditional Japanese woodblock printing technique known as mokuhanga. In making his City Trees and City Lights series, Furneaux wanted to try out chunkier forms with wider surfaces. “I was aware that the interaction between the two forms was important,” explains Furneaux “once I had established this relationship with the wooden form, I became very interested in how the clothing of the form made the forms spatial interaction more complex.” 

Coques, Brigitte Bouquin-Sellès, felt, 76.75” x 51”, 2019. Photo by Tom Grotta.

Premiering in April were also works by Nnenna Okore and Brigitte Bouquin Sellés. In works like Coulée les de fils, Brigitte Bouquin Sellès uses selvedge ends, produced during the manufacture of the well-known Cholet handkerchief on looms in France. These strips are cut automatically by the machine from the outer edges of the weave. The artist reinterprets this manufactured material, made up of falls destined for destruction. The mutation is profound, these falling fabrics become works that are born by gravity. Using this material, the creation mode of Brigitte Bouquin Sellès is original: it creates not by adding material but not subtraction either, in this case, small pieces of weft still attached to the warp, snatched one by one to achieve the artist’s ends.

The Path, Norma Minkowitz, mixed media, 14” x 52” x 52,” 2013. Photo by Tom Grotta.

      To wrap up April, we shared Norma Minkowitz’ The Path. The piece is very personal for Minkowitz, in creating it she explored her thoughts, identity and how she feels about the path her life is taking. Minkowitz even used a casting of her own head for the center of the piece, painting it with a camouflage pattern to camouflage her feelings and fears, a process you can see in this video.

      If you weren’t able to make it to the exhibition, have no fear, you can still see the pieces featured in our coveted exhibition catalog art + identity: an international view, which is available for purchase in our online store HERE.

art + identity: Who’s New? Neha Puri Dhir and Nnenna Okore

April 24, 2019 0 Comment
Zazen, Neha Puri Dhir, resist dye, silk,, 41” x 41”, 2015. Photo by Tom Grotta.

We are excited to be including four artists new to browngrotta arts in art + identity: an international view. They include Neha Puri Dhir of India and Nnenna Okore who grew up and studied in Nigeria and now lives in the US.


Neha Puri Dhir‘s textile study has also been broad-based, including time at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, India, studies in Italy, Latvia, the UK and a workshop with Americans Yoshiko Wada and Jack Larsen. Dhir has intentionally explored a variety of textile techniques, developing a particular appreciation for shibori and stitch resist. “More than the means,” she told Hand/Eye magazine, “It is the story that fascinates me. It is enchanting to know the origin of these age-old Japanese techniques. Unconsciously, and interestingly, similar resist-dyeing techniques were taking birth in various corners of the world — bandhini in India and adire from Nigeria. These traditional crafts were changing hands from one generation to another and unknowingly developing a pedagogy.”

A closer look at Dhir’s Zazen

Dhir has experimented with this meticulous and labor-intensive technique, sourcing her fabrics from various parts of India and using machine stitch instead of hand to achieve something not otherwise possible. Dhir’s design philosophy has been influenced by the Japanese aesthetic wabi-sari, centred on the acceptance of impermanence and imperfection. 

Ashioke, Nnenna Okore, burlap, ceramic, 28” x 35” x 4”, 2007


Born in Australia and raised in Nigeria, Nnenna Okore has received international acclaim for her richly textured abstract sculptures and installations. Her breathtaking works explore the fragility and ephemerality of terrestrial existence. Her highly tactile sculptures respond to the rhythms and contours of everyday life, combining reductive methods of shredding, fraying, twisting and teasing with constructive processes of tying, weaving, stitching and dyeing. Also, informing her aesthetics are familiar sounds of sweeping, chopping, talking and washing, processes that reflect the transience of human labor and its inevitable mark on the material world.

“…My processes of fraying, tearing, teasing, weaving, dyeing, waxing, accumulating and sewing allow me to interweave and synthesize the distinct properties of materials,…[M]uch like impermanent earthly attributes, my organic and twisted structures mimic the dazzling intricacies of fabric, trees, barks, topography and architecture. All my processes are adapted or inspired by traditional women’s practice, the African environment, third-world economies and recycled waste.”

Details in Okore’s Ashioke


Okore is a Professor of Art at Chicago’s North Park University, where she chairs the Art department and teaches courses in Art Theory and Sculptural Practices. She earned her B.A degree in Painting from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (First Class Honors) in 1999, and subsequently received her MA and MFA at the University of Iowa, in 2004 and 2005 respectively. Okore spent a year as an apprentice in El Anatsui’s studio in Nigeria.

The opening of art + identity: an international view is at browngrotta arts, 276 Ridgefield Road, Wilton, CT 06897, Saturday, April 27th from 1 pm to 6 pm. Sunday the 28th through Sunday May 5th, the exhibition hours are 10 am to 5 pm. For the complete list of the more than 50 artists who are participating, visit our calendar page HERE.