Space 204 welcomes back 2023 Hamblet Award Recipient, Chidinma Onukwuru in January 2026
Every January, Space 204 and the Vanderbilt University Department of Art open the spring semester with a solo exhibition from the returning Hamblet award recipient. January 2026 will see the return of Chidinma Onukwuru the award winner from 2024 and her new exhibition, It’s Frightening Having This Much Presence.
The exhibition will be on view in Space 204 from January 8-29, 2026 with an opening reception on Thursday, January 8, 2026 from 3pm to 5pm on the second floor of the E. Bronson Ingram Studio Arts Center.
About the exhibition:
It’s Frightening Having This Much Presence is a portrayal of Onukwuru’s ongoing research and intimate reflections on Igbo spirituality, ancestral ties, and the enduring relevance of traditional Igbo cosmology in modern life. The exhibition honors generations of craftwomen who embedded prayers and affirmations within their work, quietly carrying the essence of Igbo faith into the present.
Through this body of work, Onukwuru engages with the deeply personal dimensions of spiritual inheritance. She reflects on names carried, including her own, and how they function as living incantations of communal and personal destiny. Guided by traditional Nigerian techniques imparted by Philadelphia potter Robin Williams-Turnage — herself in the lineage of the legendary potter, Ladi Kwali — Onukwuru grounds this body of work in the continuity of a tactile wisdom. From this foundation, she shapes a contemporary artistic voice reflective of her personal and collective identities.
About the artist:
Chidinma Onukwuru is a multidisciplinary artist from Philadelphia, PA whose work reflects her sustained inquiry into the complexities of her Nigerian-American identity. In her practice, she merges inherited traditions with contemporary form through her explorations of spirituality, feminism, Blackness, and the wider African diaspora. Central to her process is an attention to materiality and its capacity to hold memory, shape narrative, and anchor ritual. Onukwuru has worked in video, photography, collage, ceramics, sculpture, and installation.
Since graduating Vanderbilt University, Onukwuru has continued her arts education in collaboration with local Philadelphia artists and community organizations. Supported by the Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge Hamblet Award, she has traveled internationally and within the U.S. to study how Nigerian diasporic communities preserve, reinterpret, and transform cultural practices across distance and time.
About the Hamblet Award:
Established in 1984, the Margaret Stonewall Hamblet Award has changed the lives of many of the recipients as well as helped to build the studio art program at Vanderbilt as we know it today.
There is an endearing story behind the gift that Clement H. Hamblet established in memory of his wife, Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge. The soon to be Mrs. Hamblet was taking a sabbatical year from her studies in studio art at Peabody College to study painting in Paris when they met and fell in love. It was a time that they both remembered fondly for the rest of their lives. Mr. Hamblet wanted to create a similar experience of travel and time to develop one’s art for a senior graduating from Vanderbilt.
The gift allows a graduate, who is serious about pursuing art, to travel and have time to create. In 1984, this was a surprising gift to a department without an art major, although many students did thoughtful and interesting work over the years. Receiving the Hamblet Award gave most of the students the confidence and the time to build a body of work to pursue graduate degrees or to develop their own art studios.
In 2005, with new facilities, additional faculty and support from the administration, Vanderbilt began to offer a Bachelor of Arts degree in studio. The Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge Hamblet Award became an important element in the development of our art major. The competition and the accompanying art exhibition have created a capstone experience for our seniors serving as a natural extension of a senior thesis. The gift also enriches the senior major experience throughout the whole senior year, with guest artist visits as well as an art viewing trip to a city with a vibrant art community for all the majors.
You can learn about Onukwuru’s senior thesis Remasking at the exhibition page here: https://as.vanderbilt.edu/art/remasking-chidinma-onukwuru/
Exhibition information:
Artist: Chidinma Onukwuru
Title: It’s Frightening Having This Much Presence
Dates: January 8-29, 2026
Opening Reception: Thursday, January 8, 2026, 3pm to 5pm
Location: E. Bronson Ingram Studio Arts Center
Address: 1204 25th Avenue South, Nashville, Tennessee 37240
Downloads: Exhibition Poster (click and download here)
