Please ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes of website accessibility Skip to content

ESIRI ERHERIENE-ESSI

Reflections

Night Gallery is pleased to announce Reflections, a presentation of new paintings by Esiri Erheriene-Essi. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. Based in Amsterdam, Erheriene-Essi created these works across an ocean, their arrival in Los Angeles a resonant offering—bringing with them the quiet weight of distance traveled and stories carried.

Installation view of "Reflections" at Night Gallery

Esiri Erheriene-Essi, Reflections, installation view, 2025

A painting of a group of people against a pink wall with champagne bottles and birthday cake.

Esiri Erheriene-Essi, When You Were Young (Sweet Sixteen), 2025

Detail of painted dolls and champagne bottles and coupes.

Esiri Erheriene-Essi, When You Were Young (Sweet Sixteen), detail, 2025

Installation view of "Reflections" at Night Gallery

Esiri Erheriene-Essi, Reflections, installation view, 2025

Across this new body of work, Erheriene-Essi carries on with her time-honored tradition of breathing life into inspired and discarded photographs, using paint, color, and layered ephemera to investigate memory. The artist works through her paintings with the same skill and stewardship as a quilter, threading together histories through texture and tone. In this new series, she embraces the flatness of photographic source material while deepening the emotional and chromatic complexity of brown skin—bringing dimension, variation, and luminosity to the surface.

A painting of three older women seated with a young boy on their lap.

Esiri Erheriene-Essi, Tomorrow is a long long time, 2025

Installation view of "Reflections" at Night Gallery

Esiri Erheriene-Essi, Reflections, installation view, 2025

Installation view of "Reflections" at Night Gallery

Esiri Erheriene-Essi, Reflections, installation view, 2025

A painting of an older woman seated in an ochre leather chair sewing with a young boy at her feet.

Esiri Erheriene-Essi, Grandma’s Hands, 2025

Detail of a woman's face wearing glasses.

Esiri Erheriene-Essi, Grandma’s Hands, detail, 2025

Installation view of "Reflections" at Night Gallery

Esiri Erheriene-Essi, Reflections, installation view, 2025

An archivist and collector first, Erheriene-Essi begins her process by mining through estates and online repositories for faces and vignettes that speak to her. This collection has amassed across continents and oceans, from North America to Europe to Africa, demonstrating the diversity of Black identity, while illuminating the moments that are universal across all our memories.

Installation view of "Reflections" at Night Gallery

Esiri Erheriene-Essi, Reflections, installation view, 2025

A painting of three younger children and two older ladies in a living room.

Esiri Erheriene-Essi, As my grandma always used to say, don't go borrowing trouble, 2023

Installation view of "Reflections" at Night Gallery

Esiri Erheriene-Essi, Reflections, installation view, 2025

A painting of a group of women and a small boy in an airport.

Esiri Erheriene-Essi, Same Town, New Story (Nigeria Airways), 2023

Esiri Erheriene-Essi, Reflections, installation view, 2025

Esiri Erheriene-Essi, Reflections, installation view, 2025

In her dissection of memory, Erheriene-Essi is a visual anthropologist, reading images for context clues and filling their gaps with gestures from her own lived experience. In A memory from your youth (London Trocadero), a fan poster for Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter tour noticeably sits on the shirt of a girl eating ice cream in the 1970s. The artist’s temporal twist, fusing together past and present, melds Black iconography with earnest symbols of nostalgia. As an artist, her mastery of collapsing time ensures the continuity of the culture.

These paintings were created over the course of two years, in rhythm with the demands of motherhood—a theme that quietly permeates the work through the lens of legacy and inheritance. Erheriene-Essi sees her practice as an active conversation, one that begins with her paintings but is completed by the viewer’s own activations of memory.

A painting of a group of people gathered around a couch posing for a portrait.

Esiri Erheriene-Essi, The Reunion, 2024

Esiri Erheriene-Essi, Reflections, installation view, 2025

Esiri Erheriene-Essi, Reflections, installation view, 2025

A painting of a group of children at a birthday party eating waffles.

Esiri Erheriene-Essi, The Icing on the Cake, 2025

Erheriene-Essi is deeply moved by the connection between the diaspora, not only across geography, but across time. Throughout Reflections she continues her exploration of this relationship. Motifs such as the Black power fist, the face of Toni Morrison, a “Dismantle Apartheid” pin, all time travel accentuating the meaning of timelessness within the collective memory.

Esiri Erheriene-Essi, Reflections, installation view, 2025

Esiri Erheriene-Essi, Reflections, installation view, 2025

This evolution is on view in A Royal Flush, a work depicting what the artist imagines to be a group of men enjoying their last days together before deployment to Vietnam. Their faces are marked by a spectrum of hues, highlights, shadows, and undertones, encapsulating the use of color as a tool to depict emotion.

Esiri Erheriene-Essi, Reflections, installation view, 2025

Esiri Erheriene-Essi, Reflections, installation view, 2025

Esiri Erheriene-Essi, Reflections, installation view, 2025

Esiri Erheriene-Essi, Reflections, installation view, 2025

A painting of four men and three boys gathered around a card table.

Esiri Erheriene-Essi, A Royal Flush, 2025

Esiri Erheriene-Essi, Reflections, installation view, 2025

Esiri Erheriene-Essi, Reflections, installation view, 2025

The exhibition is titled in honor of the song by Diana Ross & The Supremes, a comfort album that has accompanied the artist through many seasons of her life, including the making of this body of work. The most apropos of the lyrics being:

“Reflections of the way life used to be. Reflections of the love you took from me.”

A painting of a woman and four children eating ice cream.

Esiri Erheriene-Essi, A memory from your youth (London Trocadero), 2024

In faded hues and frayed edges, Erheriene-Essi develops an architecture of remembrance, for what has been lost, and for which should never be. Her paintings become mirrors, not of the past as it was, but as it is felt. Reflection as a sacred act of reclamation.

-Shaquille Heath

Esiri Erheriene-Essi, Reflections, installation view, 2025

Esiri Erheriene-Essi, Reflections, installation view, 2025

A painting of a woman with five young children eating a meal.

Esiri Erheriene-Essi, E is for Everybody, 2023

Detail of a woman smiling next to a xerox transferred black and white photo.

Esiri Erheriene-Essi, E is for Everybody, detail, 2023

Esiri Erheriene-Essi (1982) is a United Kingdom-born and Amsterdam-based Nigerian artist from Lewisham, South London. In 2000 she attended Camberwell College of Art for a foundation year. From 2001-2004 she studied Media Studies at University of East London and attained a Masters of Fine Art from the same university in 2006. In 2007 Erheriene-Essi attended the international residency programme De Ateliers in Amsterdam, the Netherlands and in 2009 she won the prestigious Dutch Royal Award for Modern Painting prize. In 2011 she was a nominee for the Volkskrant Visual Arts Prize, and in 2014 Erheriene-Essi had her first museum solo exhibition at Museum Arnhem, the Netherlands. In 2019 she was shortlisted for the Prix de Rome, the oldest and most generous prize for talented artists and architects in the Netherlands.

A painting of a group of people against a pink wall with champagne bottles and birthday cake.

Esiri Erheriene-Essi

When You Were Young (Sweet Sixteen), 2025

oil, ink and xerox transfer on linen

58 1/2 x 78 3/4 x 2 1/4 in (148.6 x 200 x 5.7 cm)

Inquire
A painting of an older woman seated in an ochre leather chair sewing with a young boy at her feet.

Esiri Erheriene-Essi

Grandma’s Hands, 2025

oil, ink and xerox transfer on linen

54 1/2 x 70 1/2 x 2 1/4 in (138.4 x 179.1 x 5.7 cm)

Inquire
A painting of three older women seated with a young boy on their lap.

Esiri Erheriene-Essi

Tomorrow is a long long time, 2025

oil, ink and xerox transfer on linen

56 x 78 1/4 x 2 1/4 in (142.2 x 198.8 x 5.7 cm)

Inquire
A painting of three younger children and two older ladies in a living room.

Esiri Erheriene-Essi

As my grandma always used to say, don't go borrowing trouble, 2023

oil, ink, and xerox transfer on linen

54 1/2 x 54 1/2 x 2 1/4 in (138.4 x 138.4 x 5.7 cm)

Inquire
A painting of a group of women and a small boy in an airport.

Esiri Erheriene-Essi

Same Town, New Story (Nigeria Airways), 2023

oil, ink and xerox transfer on linen

66 1/2 x 70 1/2 x 2 1/4 in (168.9 x 179.1 x 5.7 cm)

Inquire
A painting of a group of people gathered around a couch posing for a portrait.

Esiri Erheriene-Essi

The Reunion, 2024

oil on linen

55 1/2 x 78 1/4 x 2 1/4 in (141 x 198.8 x 5.7 cm)

Inquire
A painting of a group of children at a birthday party eating waffles.

Esiri Erheriene-Essi

The Icing on the Cake, 2025

ink and xerox transfer on linen

51 1/2 x 68 x 2 1/4 in (130.8 x 172.7 x 5.7 cm)

Inquire
A painting of four men and three boys gathered around a card table.

Esiri Erheriene-Essi

A Royal Flush, 2025

oil, ink and xerox transfer on linen

62 1/2 x 78 1/2 x 2 1/4 in (158.8 x 199.4 x 5.7 cm)

 

Inquire
A painting of a woman and four children eating ice cream.

Esiri Erheriene-Essi

A memory from your youth (London Trocadero), 2024

oil, ink and xerox transfer on linen

55 x 55 x 2 1/4 in (139.7 x 139.7 x 5.7 cm)

Inquire
A painting of a woman with five young children eating a meal.

Esiri Erheriene-Essi

E is for Everybody, 2023

oil, ink and xerox transfer on linen

56 x 78 1/4 x 2 1/4 in (142.2 x 198.8 x 5.7 cm)

Inquire
A painting of a group of people against a pink wall with champagne bottles and birthday cake.

Esiri Erheriene-Essi

When You Were Young (Sweet Sixteen), 2025

oil, ink and xerox transfer on linen

58 1/2 x 78 3/4 x 2 1/4 in (148.6 x 200 x 5.7 cm)

A painting of an older woman seated in an ochre leather chair sewing with a young boy at her feet.

Esiri Erheriene-Essi

Grandma’s Hands, 2025

oil, ink and xerox transfer on linen

54 1/2 x 70 1/2 x 2 1/4 in (138.4 x 179.1 x 5.7 cm)

A painting of three older women seated with a young boy on their lap.

Esiri Erheriene-Essi

Tomorrow is a long long time, 2025

oil, ink and xerox transfer on linen

56 x 78 1/4 x 2 1/4 in (142.2 x 198.8 x 5.7 cm)

A painting of three younger children and two older ladies in a living room.

Esiri Erheriene-Essi

As my grandma always used to say, don't go borrowing trouble, 2023

oil, ink, and xerox transfer on linen

54 1/2 x 54 1/2 x 2 1/4 in (138.4 x 138.4 x 5.7 cm)

A painting of a group of women and a small boy in an airport.

Esiri Erheriene-Essi

Same Town, New Story (Nigeria Airways), 2023

oil, ink and xerox transfer on linen

66 1/2 x 70 1/2 x 2 1/4 in (168.9 x 179.1 x 5.7 cm)

A painting of a group of people gathered around a couch posing for a portrait.

Esiri Erheriene-Essi

The Reunion, 2024

oil on linen

55 1/2 x 78 1/4 x 2 1/4 in (141 x 198.8 x 5.7 cm)

A painting of a group of children at a birthday party eating waffles.

Esiri Erheriene-Essi

The Icing on the Cake, 2025

ink and xerox transfer on linen

51 1/2 x 68 x 2 1/4 in (130.8 x 172.7 x 5.7 cm)

A painting of four men and three boys gathered around a card table.

Esiri Erheriene-Essi

A Royal Flush, 2025

oil, ink and xerox transfer on linen

62 1/2 x 78 1/2 x 2 1/4 in (158.8 x 199.4 x 5.7 cm)

 

A painting of a woman and four children eating ice cream.

Esiri Erheriene-Essi

A memory from your youth (London Trocadero), 2024

oil, ink and xerox transfer on linen

55 x 55 x 2 1/4 in (139.7 x 139.7 x 5.7 cm)

A painting of a woman with five young children eating a meal.

Esiri Erheriene-Essi

E is for Everybody, 2023

oil, ink and xerox transfer on linen

56 x 78 1/4 x 2 1/4 in (142.2 x 198.8 x 5.7 cm)