Hi,
I’m Immaculata, an artist, writer and researcher, and I believe in the power of the humanities to help us imagine and build more connected/healing experiences for us all, individuals and communities.
(Click here for a bio.)
I made the Sweet Medicine project to advocate for this belief.
Note:
In 2024, I felt quiet for the first time maybe since I was a child, and I heard myself speak. In that quiet, I found love and bliss in the words and work of so many people remaking this world with tenderness and integrity. I made the Sweet Medicine podcast with some of them. Everywhere I went, I went with Grace Lee Boggs’s words via adrienne maree brown: Each one of us is an individual practice ground for what the whole can or cannot do, will or will not do.
And with a grant from the Goethe-Institut Nigeria, I started making a book, Restful. I originally pitched it as a magazine, but because the National Library of Nigeria currently only provides an ISBN (not an ISSN) number, I’m now remaking it into an anthology instead, which is what I called the endeavour anyway when it lived only in my head and on Substack. I’m screaming, crying, throwing up every day until this book is out in the world.
I worked too hard on both Sweet Medicine and Restful and realised that work is my best friend. Sometimes, I get a bit too close to the sun (side-eyes Lagos) that the will to work/live evades me. It’s good to remember that things cost things. The last time I got super tired, I made this sweet playlist.
Slowly, I’m making a home for myself in my life, in Nigeria, in this big, many-ed world. I’m making the world I want to see. It costs things.
- Immaculata
24-01-2025
24-01-2025
portfolio highlights
The Fire in My Memory, winner of 2023 Abebi Award in Afro-Nonfiction
on life after the Sosoliso plane crash
Whom Did He Love?, The Brooklyn Rail (2022) hard to say that any one thing is my favourite thing I’ve written but this is often it
Whom Did He Love?, The Brooklyn Rail (2022) hard to say that any one thing is my favourite thing I’ve written but this is often it
You Matter to Me,
short film - winner of Rising Star award, S16 Film Festival 2023
short film - winner of Rising Star award, S16 Film Festival 2023
Will Africapitalism Save Africa?, Le Temps (2022)
Can Green Hydrogen tackle Nigeria’s persistent energy poverty?, Unbias the News (2023)
Can Green Hydrogen tackle Nigeria’s persistent energy poverty?, Unbias the News (2023)
In the Dark in Nigeria, Popula (2023)
what poor electricity does to our minds
Face the Music, Wuruwuru/ Wax Poetics (2023)
on re-constructed Nigerian identities in 1970s album covers
what poor electricity does to our minds
Face the Music, Wuruwuru/ Wax Poetics (2023)
on re-constructed Nigerian identities in 1970s album covers
Unless otherwise stated, all images and writing on this website were made by Immaculata Abba.
Copyright: Immaculata Abba (2017 - 2025)