Growing up, Chike Emembo has always been surrounded by gifted people. From a mum that is a trained chef and home economics teacher, to young primary and secondary school “artist” friends. Amongst these friends, he never considered himself an artist; He just tagged along and continued drawing.

Born in 1979, with the encouragement of his mum, Chike started his professional career at Nwafor Orizu College of Education Nsugbe Anambra state, where he majored in sculpture and graphics in the year 2000. He subsequently got his bachelors B.A(Ed) from the University of Nigeria Nsukka in 2003.

After the mandatory youth service programme, Chike moved to Abuja and settled into a professional studio practice. He got his first Christian art commission from a client that wanted parts of the book of Hezekiah visually interpreted for him. This unconsciously kicked off his interest in contemporary spiritual art. He put together the first solo exhibition of Christian art in 2009 which turned out very highly successful. After this show, he did a sequel in 2010. He has also created several platforms like “Artaste: the plates and palettes project “to show both his art and that of other artists.

Emembo’s inspiration comes for him from a variety of sources: other artists’ art, sermon, worship songs or just a verse in the bible. It became important to him to create visual trajectories from the Word to visual templates which help assimilation and retention. His main objective has remained to produce works of art which are spiritually uplifting for him and hopes his audience relates to the narrative.

He believes his works will play a role in the global spiritual awakening, such that when people interact with his work, he hopes they may understand with clarity what has been in their subconscious which hitherto they couldn’t reach.