There may be no mollusks in Chioma Ebinama’s solo exhibition “A Spiral Shell,” but there is a radial symmetry to the forms that populate the Athens-based Nigerian American artist’s watercolors. Suspended from the ceiling in the center of the gallery are three large watercolor works. In the most striking of these, The Empress (all works 2021), a multibreasted female figure curls around both sides of the paper, a slender tail tucked between her legs. White liquid seemingly drips from each of her many nipples, manifesting in the tiny peaks of rice on the floor below. My life as a seed in the wind appears as a coffee-stained cloud. On closer inspection, intricate characters emerge: a tiny centaur, a mauve dragonfly, several gossamer-winged butterflies. These delicate depictions demand up-close viewing.

In the back room of the gallery, Petting a bumblebee portrays a reclining one-eyed girl propped on one elbow, her legs haphazardly crossed. The pattern of her skirt echoes that of the Mbari sculpture tradition of Nigeria’s Igbo culture. A recording of Ebinama’s words plays near the pale-pink wall opposite in the two-and-a-half minute sound piece Prayer for When Fear Strikes at Dawn. I catch “Do not allow yourself to be swallowed by that prickly dark place” and, moments later, “There are many ways to live a life.” Like the artist, who has lived nomadically in recent years, these works give the impression of being unmoored. This sense of drift, along with the escapist nature of the watercolors, conflate with themes of Blackness, femininity, and mythology, offering a dreamscape of animistic creatures to reckon with the uncertainty of our immediate future.

— Gwen Burlington