02/09/2026
🎨 Artist Spotlight: Naomi Victoria Mangazi ✨️
**What if art could help us remember?**
For Naomi Victoria Mangazi, art is not simply about making something beautiful. It is about looking again, asking questions, and uncovering the stories that might otherwise disappear.
In many ways, Naomi says art found her long before she realised she was an artist. As a child, she loved drawing and making things with her hands. There was something comforting about taking a blank piece of paper and turning an idea from her imagination into something real.
Today, that same instinct has developed into a deeper form of storytelling.
Largely self-taught, Naomi has built her artistic practice through curiosity, experimentation, mistakes and trying again. She believes an artist never really stops learning because every new piece teaches something—not only about technique and patience, but also about yourself.
Her style is constantly evolving, but she describes it as storytelling through texture, line, colour and memory.
Graphite, colour, paper, fabric, crochet and mixed media all find their way into her creative world. At the moment, she is particularly drawn to pencil and mixed media. Pencil allows her to explore emotion through light, shadow and line, while mixed media brings texture and cultural elements into her work.
For Naomi, the story often determines the medium.
And her stories are deeply rooted in memory, identity, heritage, belonging and nature.
She is fascinated by the idea that some histories may never have been written down, yet their stories survive—in people, objects, landscapes, traditions and even the soil beneath our feet.
Her inspiration can come from almost anywhere. A conversation. A memory. A bird outside her window. A flower. Music. A feeling. A cultural story. Or simply a question that refuses to leave her mind.
Sometimes an ordinary object suddenly becomes something more:
"There is a story here."
Naomi doesn't work according to a strict creative routine. Her process is intuitive, and she enjoys not always knowing where a piece will end up. Sometimes the finished artwork looks completely different from what she imagined at the beginning—and she sees that uncertainty as part of the magic.
Her favourite moment is the transformation: watching something that existed only in her mind slowly appear in front of her.
The biggest challenge, however, can be trusting herself. As a self-taught artist, she sometimes wonders whether her work is "good enough." But she has learned that creativity isn't about waiting until you feel like an expert.
Sometimes you simply have to make the work.
Her life outside art is inseparable from what she creates. Her African heritage, family, motherhood, the places she has lived, the things she has lost and the things she has discovered all find their way into her work.
And then there is Naomi's wonderfully curious side.
She admits that she can become completely obsessed with an idea. One simple thought can quickly become an entire project in her head—a collection, an exhibition, a story and twenty more artworks that could somehow connect to it.
That sense of curiosity is leading her towards an exciting future.
Naomi is currently developing her pencil and mixed-media work while exploring colourful, nature-inspired pieces featuring birds, flowers and animals. At the same time, she is delving deeper into themes of heritage, memory and identity.
Rather than creating isolated artworks, she dreams of building collections where individual pieces connect to form a larger story.
And her biggest dream is ambitious: a multidisciplinary African heritage exhibition combining visual art, textiles, sculpture, storytelling, sound and digital media, with artists and storytellers from across Africa contributing their own memories and histories.
Ultimately, Naomi dreams of creating an archive—a place where stories that might otherwise disappear can live.
If her art could speak, its message would be one word:
"Remember."
Remember where you come from. Remember the people whose stories were never written down. Remember the beauty in your culture, your environment and your own identity.
And perhaps most importantly:
Look again. There is always more beneath the surface.
Naomi's advice to her younger creative self is just as powerful:
"Don't wait for someone to tell you that you are an artist. Make the art anyway."
Don't compare your beginning to someone else's middle. Don't be afraid to experiment, fail or change direction. And don't throw away the ideas that seem too strange or too big.
Because sometimes, the idea that keeps following you is the one you were meant to pursue.
Which piece speaks to you most?
Please go to our website for more information about her art
www.kunyeartfoundation.org
