Info:
Immaculata Abba is an artist, researcher, and cultural producer.
Her research spans history, cultural theory, and economic life in West Africa with projects on topics such as market women’s thought, colonial masculinity, and the legacies of the transatlantic slave trade in Nigeria’s colonial period. She holds degrees from Queen Mary University of London and the University of Oxford.
From 2020-2025, under the name Studio Styles, she produced projects on cultural advocacy (#CulturePays), social healing (Sweet Medicine), and relational reflection (Restful, the anthology), supported by a volunteer team, the Open Society Foundations, and the Goethe-Institut Nigeria, respectively. Around these projects, she also organised community programs, including career and skill workshops and a curated monthly opportunities newsletter.
As an artist working in film, writing, and photography, her acclaimed short film You Matter to Me (2022) debuted at Film Africa/The BFI London and has been screened internationally. She is working on a second film on how our bodies hold memories that the government and formal archives can’t. The film is supported by the Goethe-Institut Nigeria’s post-Memory, post-Archive (2024) workshop. Her essays and features have explored Africapitalism, spirituality, ecology, art, and everyday survival in Nigeria. She was the 2023 winner of the Abebi Award for Afro-nonfiction for her essay The Fire in My Memory, a participant in the 2023 New York Portfolio Review, and a 2022 West African Writer-in-Residence at LOATAD in Accra, Ghana.
She lives in Enugu, Nigeria.
Informally:
I like peace and quiet. I love exploring food; I love enjoying food.
My favourite place in the world is any bedroom I can call mine. My favourite moment is every time before I fall asleep. For now, my favourite thing to do is work. Music. I am happy to be alive in this world, and I am really grateful for that and many more things. I value integrity and revel in the field, in details. And in colours. I look forward to making music and playing with wood and fabric more seriously.
Also, I like making meaning and sense of things, Nigerian life especially. Beyond Nigerian life in particular, I just really like finding out how things are made, where things are, and how things work—and being as precise as I can be at it because journeying is fun.
I love working on things I’m passionate about. I used to feel like it would be failing God if I did not spend my life doing the things I love, you know- finding things out, being precise at whatever... but God and I are cool now. I understand there’s no failing, but my body is still learning to not be so scared all the time, still learning that I will love what I love, that I am who I am, and that who I am includes something that changes, and something that will always surprise me.
I’m part of something vast, and my job is just to stay present and available to it. I enjoy feeling feelings, defining the world for myself, and participating in this very wonderful gift of life.
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My favourite place in the world is any bedroom I can call mine. My favourite moment is every time before I fall asleep. For now, my favourite thing to do is work. Music. I am happy to be alive in this world, and I am really grateful for that and many more things. I value integrity and revel in the field, in details. And in colours. I look forward to making music and playing with wood and fabric more seriously.
Also, I like making meaning and sense of things, Nigerian life especially. Beyond Nigerian life in particular, I just really like finding out how things are made, where things are, and how things work—and being as precise as I can be at it because journeying is fun.
I love working on things I’m passionate about. I used to feel like it would be failing God if I did not spend my life doing the things I love, you know- finding things out, being precise at whatever... but God and I are cool now. I understand there’s no failing, but my body is still learning to not be so scared all the time, still learning that I will love what I love, that I am who I am, and that who I am includes something that changes, and something that will always surprise me.
I’m part of something vast, and my job is just to stay present and available to it. I enjoy feeling feelings, defining the world for myself, and participating in this very wonderful gift of life.
Unless otherwise stated, all images and text on this website were made by Immaculata Abba.
Copyright: Immaculata Abba (2017 - 2025)