Home Artist Programs Supported Artists Nadrea Njoku

Nadrea Njoku

Atlanta, Georgia

This work, titled From ears to footnotes but never forgotten, shows a portrait of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper screenprinted four times and a building printed once. The woman wears a tightly fitted corset and long skirt, and she rests both hands on the back of a chair. Ochre and umber-brown swirls overlap the screenprints, which are each a different shade of muted blue, green, or red.

From ears to footnotes but never forgotten

2026

A screenprint of a young girl and a man overlaps three times across the center of this piece, which is titled Daddy’s girl 3. Vertical bands and cloud-like areas of lapis blue, canary yellow, apple red, and amethyst purple overlay the otherwise gray-scale images. The man has a darker skin tone and smiles widely. The girl has lighter skin and looks out alertly with her lips parted.

Daddy's girl 3

2024

A portrait of two young children who look out at us are screenprinted in grayscale two and a half times across the paper in this piece titled Brother heart 1. The portrait is screenprinted again in the center of the paper but in ultramarine blue, fuchsia pink, and violet purple so the bodies and features blend and double.

Brother heart 1

2024

Two oval screenprints of Frederick Douglass slightly overlap above a train spouting steam below in Carried to freedom on the rain of wings. One portrait is dark blue and the other is burgundy red. The train is deep green, and faint gray feathers fill in much of the rest of the space.

Carried to freedom on a train of wings

2024

Artworks shown are selected from works submitted by the artist in their grant or residency application. All works are copyright of the artist or artist’s estate.

About Nadrea Njoku

Nadrea Njoku is a Black artist with shoulder-length black hair. She wears a colorfully patterned button-down shirt, silver earrings, and a necklace.

Nadrea R. Njoku is a visual artist whose practice emerges from the intersection of personal memory, archival research, and critical fabulation, rooted in her New Orleans heritage and informed by fifteen years of interdisciplinary work in higher education and cultural institutions. Born and raised in New Orleans, Njoku's artistic foundation was established through early immersion in the city's cultural landscape and her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Xavier University of Louisiana. Through a Ph.D. in education, she developed the research methodologies that now inform her artistic practice of reconstructive memory and speculative fabulation. Her interdisciplinary experience leading research teams and developing arts-based projects has shaped her approach to making visible stories that some have rendered incomplete. Her expertise in narrative-centered inquiry and community building provides the foundation for her artistic practice, in which she excavates family photographs and archival materials to reconstruct worlds that exist both within and beyond documented history.

Program Participation

Joan Mitchell Center Residency, 2026

Website / Social Links

“ My work emerges through reconstructive memory—a methodology that weaves together lived experience, inherited knowledge, and speculative reimagining. This approach honors memory's fragmentary nature while creating space for narratives that official archives have marginalized or erased.”