Yagazie Emezi is a multidisciplinary artist working across photography, textile and sculpture, whose practice focuses on unearthing global patterns of inequity from an Indigenous perspective. Her work is informed by an extensive background in photojournalism, covering issues of corruption, environmental failure and the continued influence of colonial policies on contemporary international relations.
Her recent work centres on questions of identity and cultural preservation, integrating traditional motifs, Indigenous knowledge and cultural practices with contemporary artistic techniques.
Emezi is the recipient of the inaugural Getty Images Creative Bursary Award (2018) and a grant from the U.S. Consulate General in Lagos (2018) for her photographic work addressing sexual violence against women and vulnerable young people in Nigeria. In 2019, she was selected for the inaugural cohort of Kehinde Wiley's Black Rock residency in Senegal, nominated for the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative, and became the first Black African woman to photograph for National Geographic magazine.
In 2020, she received a National Geographic Storytelling Grant to complete Another Tale by Moonlight. She was shortlisted for the 2023 Contemporary African Photography Prize and the German Peace Prize for Photography. Her work has been exhibited internationally in galleries and museums, including The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, as part of New Photography 2023.