Nigerian-born, London-based artist Yingi Mao turns her gaze inward to the quiet, overlooked poetry of daily life. Her debut exhibition, titled The Everyday, opening on 2 November 2025, invites audiences to pause, breathe, and rediscover the profound beauty that exists in simplicity and stillness.

Through textured acrylic paintings layered with sensitivity and rhythm, Mao captures the subtle sensations that define human experience—the brush of fabric against skin, the scent of baby powder and roses in the morning, the lingering warmth of sunlight across a windowsill, the soft permanence of memory. Each piece hums with intimacy, as if painted from the inside out, translating emotion into surface and colour.

“I experience the world through texture before colour,” Mao reflects. “My work explores the rituals of daily life, those moments shaped by touch, scent, and feeling. I’m drawn to the beauty in routine, both the mundane and the exquisite. There’s grace in the things we often overlook.”

Born Yingiebinimi Yvonne Asamaowei in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Mao’s journey into art began in 2018 as a personal experiment to understand the relationship between love and wisdom, emotion and thought. Without formal training, she turned to unconventional materials like rope, wood, and fragments of cloth to visualise her ideas—an instinctive, meditative approach that has since become a defining hallmark of her practice and artistic voice. Her process is guided by intuition and quiet reflection, allowing her works to grow organically, layer by layer, much like the emotions they portray.

Her creative process often begins with solitude—music playing softly, a single candle flickering beside her workspace, and memories unfolding like fabric in her mind. For Mao, painting is both confession and prayer, a dialogue between her inner world and the tangible textures of life. Every stroke becomes an act of remembrance, each layer a whisper of something once felt but never forgotten.

In a joint exhibition with photographer Gideon Chukwu, Mao’s The Everyday will feature a new series of mixed-media works, accompanied by a limited-edition catalogue and exhibition prints. Chukwu’s complementary show, Northern Echoes, documents the rhythm of northern Nigerian life—its people, landscapes, and timeless rituals. Together, both artists trace the quiet connections that bind human experience, from Port Harcourt to Kaduna, from one morning routine to another.

The opening will bring together artists, collectors, and cultural figures in a shared celebration of introspection, ease, and the art of being. The Everyday is less about observation and more about communion—a gentle reminder that beauty is not found in the extraordinary, but in the ordinary moments we dare to see anew.