Uli awakened:
in her name
A PAINTED NARRATIVE BY DOMINIQUE SWIFT
Uli Awakened: In Her Name explores identity, womanhood, and cultural memory through the Igbo art form of Uli.
Conceived as an artist’s naming ceremony Igu nwa aha, the work unfolds in conversation with Uli’s visual language as a reflection of an African American woman’s engagement with African ethnic traditions and a broader search for identity and belonging.
It draws parallels between the first twelve days of life, culminating in the gift of naming oneself, and the stages of artistic becoming shaped by culture and inheritance.
The full collection is currently on view at Artist Image Resource (Pittsburgh, PA) from May 22, 2026 - June 28, 2026.
Ohere
Oil paint and gold leaf on gessoboard, 2025
36 x 48 in
Ohere comes from the Igbo word meaning opportunity, chance, or space.
Illustrating the parallels of the birth of the universe with an unidentified figure's emergence into being surrounded by Uli and Nsibidi symbols.
Ala’s Embrace
Oil paint, acrylic paint, gold leaf, and camwood powder on gessoboard, 2025
36 x 48 in.
Ala, the Igbo earth goddess, holds a baby in a gentle, protective gesture, reflecting the early bond between child and cultural foundation.
She is the origin of life and the giver of Uli, the visual language carried by Igbo women. The python, her sacred messenger, is a symbol for the cyclical nature of birth, death, and rebirth.
In shedding, we return to her ground and begin again from it.
Spirals of Ndu
Oil on gessoboard, 2025
48 x 36 in.
She inherited a spiral that could not expand.
A pattern of restriction disguised as order.
Unlike natural spirals that grow and evolve, the linear spiral symbolizes repetition, and stasis. Through curiosity and engagement with Uli symbols, she begins to unravel a new path. Ndu, the Igbo word for “life” asks what it means to live beyond restriction.
To return.
To transform.
To begin again from the center.
Ntugharị Uche
Oil paint, acrylic paint, and indigo powder on gessobord, 2025
37.5 x 49.5 in.
Ntgharị Uche, meaning “reflection of thought” or “turning of the mind,” shows a young girl encountering her reflection for the first time, framed by Uli symbols.
A mask begins to form in white paint across her reflection. It references the Igbo Maiden Spirit Mask, traditionally worn by male dancers to portray ideals of feminine beauty, grace, and wealth.
She now knows the mirror as threshold.
She now knows she must negotiate for self and society.
N’etiti Akara
Acrylic paint, and indigo powder on gessobord, 2026
48 x 36 in.
N’etiti Akara, means “Between the Symbols” or “Between the Marks,” in Igbo.
The work draws inspiration from ukara cloth, an indigo-dyed textile associated with the Ekpe society of southeastern Nigeria and western Cameroon. Inscribed with Nsibidi symbols, ukara transforms cloth into a coded surface carrying personal, communal, and spiritual significance while functioning as a metaphor for protection, and guarded knowledge.
What parts of us are meant to be openly read?
What parts of us should remain partially obscured?
Mmiri of Indigo
Oil paint, acrylic paint, and indigo powder on gessobord, 2025
36 x 48 in
She hovers over mmiri, Igbo for water, surrounded by the indigo plant, whose deep blue hue carries histories of both beauty and burden.
She begins to wash away a mask given to her in her youth, referencing the Igbo Maiden Spirit Mask, traditionally used to embody an idealized feminine presence.
Its removal becomes a release from expectation.
A turning back toward the self.
Site of Udo
Oil paint, acrylic paint, and oil pastel on gessobord, 2025
36 x 48 in
In Igbo tradition, some believe that the earth goddess gifted women both the power to create beauty and the responsibility to uphold moral balance. Women often serve as mediators in times of conflict. When udo, Igbo for peace, is restored, Uli lines may be painted onto the body as a gesture of reconciliation.
She isn’t just a reflection.
She is a foil.
When Ụwa Turned
Oil paint and acrylic paint on gessoboard, 2025
48 x 36 in
According to Igbo cosmology, the world (uwa) moves through four great ages in a cyclical nature.
Uga Aka is an age of oneness when humanity exists in harmony with the divine. In Uga Chi, separation begins and life enters the physical realm where mortality and distance from spirit emerge. Uga Anwu, the age of enlightenment, brings visionaries and healers (children of the sun) who reveal divine knowledge even as it begins to be misused. Now in Uga Azi, our current age of chaos, that knowledge is dispersed and the world falls into disorder because of selfish aims.
Yet practices such as Uli body art and Nsibidi script still hold the power to make the unseen legible and sustain a connection between the physical and the spiritual.
Woman’s War
Oil paint and acrylic paint on gessoboard, 2026
48 x 36 in
A wedding portrait is a site of remembrance.
Standing before Philadelphia rowhomes, my one remaining grandmother is surrounded by bridesmaids reimagined as women in my family who have passed. Their presence is placed in conversation with the Nigerian Women’s War of 1929, when thousands of Igbo women organized against British colonial rule through collective resistance and strategic disruption, successfully forcing colonial officials to abandon proposed taxation policies.
Over generations some of the wars women endure are public and historical. Others unfold quietly through care, survival, grief, and sacrifice.
Not every act of resistance is remembered.
Not every woman is named.
Yet their labor continues to shape the world around them.
Our Daughters Are Watching
Oil paint and acrylic paint on gessoboard, 2026
48 x 36 in
Traditionally passed between generations of Igbo women, Uli is learned through observation, repetition, and presence as much as instruction.
The women who mothered us leave traces of themselves.
My Soul Remembers
Oil paint and acrylic paint on gessoboard, 2026
48 x 36 in
In Uga Azi, the Age of Suffering, many move through the world disconnected from what the Igbo call mmuo, the soul or life force that links the self to memory, ancestry, and divinity. Igbo spiritual thought understands the soul as layered: chi carries personal destiny, eke anchors the body to the physical world, mmuo moves between the seen and unseen, and onyeuwa binds one life to another across time.
When practiced by a diviner, Uli is not simply decorative. Its marks trace spiritual patterns that have faded from view, revealing paths that speak to who a person is and why they are here.
The Igbo saying Onye kwe, chi ya ekwe reminds us: “If one agrees, their chi agrees.” In reconnecting with the soul, we begin to remember what has been forgotten.
Nabata
Oil paint, acrylic paint, and oil pastels on gessoboard, 2026
36 x 48 in
Nabata, means “welcome” in Igbo.
Sometimes belonging arrives before understanding does…
