Diana Ejaita joins Dutch Uncle ahead of solo presentation with Kó Gallery at The Armory Show 2026
Dutch Uncle welcomes Nigerian-Italian artist and illustrator Diana Ejaita to the agency, as she prepares for a solo presentation of new paintings and works on paper at The Armory Show in New York, presented by Lagos gallery kó, from 24–27 September 2026.
Working across fine art, illustration, textiles, publishing and fashion, Diana has developed a visual language in which silhouettes, pattern, objects and colour become vehicles for stories about migration, memory, cultural identity and belonging. Her arrival at Dutch Uncle comes at an especially interesting moment in a practice that increasingly moves between editorial illustration and the international contemporary-art world.
At The Armory Show, kó will dedicate Booth P50 at the Javits Center to a solo presentation of Diana's new work.
What is Diana showing at The Armory Show 2026?
The presentation introduces a new group of paintings and works on paper, including small-scale paintings conceived as sets of nine and intricate coloured-pencil and graphite drawings.
One of the central ideas in the work is the tradition of nature morte — still life — which Diana reinterprets as what she calls “visual prayers.” Rather than depicting isolated objects sitting motionless on a table, bodies, vessels, silhouettes and symbolic forms overlap and move through one another. Familiar things become ambiguous: part figure, part landscape, part devotional object.
In works such as Confabulations I (2026), nine individual acrylic-on-board paintings form one larger composition. The grid allows each image to operate separately while also behaving like a chapter in a broader visual narrative. Works on paper including Interiors and La regina dei sogni use coloured pencil to create a quieter, more finely drawn counterpart to the paintings.
Diana's continuing exploration of symbols, storytelling and interconnected histories has also been discussed in depth by Contemporary And (C&), which interviewed her about the relationship between her multidisciplinary work, African visual traditions and her experience of living between cultures.
Armory Show 2026 / Artworks by Diana Ejaita / Kó Gallery, Lagos
From West African storytelling to contemporary painting
Armory Show 2026 / Artworks by Diana Ejaita / Kó Gallery, Lagos
Born in Cremona, Italy, to a Nigerian father and Italian mother, Diana studied fine art in France and Germany and has lived and worked between Berlin, Italy and Lagos.
West African literature, oral storytelling and textile traditions are recurring reference points. Rather than treating pattern simply as decoration, Diana is interested in its capacity to carry information and history. Her images often feel as though several stories are occurring simultaneously, with figures and objects accumulating associations as they move across the picture.
This connection between textiles, storytelling and diasporic experience has been present throughout her career. Villa Romana, where Diana was a 2023 Villa Romana Fellow, describes her practice as spanning installation, illustration and textile design while reinvigorating visual storytelling traditions connected to her African lineage.
It is this ability to move between disciplines that makes the distinction between Diana the illustrator and Diana the fine artist increasingly difficult — and increasingly unnecessary.
The New Yorker, publishing, fashion and illustration
Diana-Ejaita-New-Yorker-cover
Alongside her gallery practice, Diana has established an international career as an illustrator, with work appearing in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Economist, Vogue and the Financial Times.
She began contributing to The New Yorker in 2019 with Iya Ni Wura (Mother Is Gold). The magazine describes Diana as an illustrator, textile designer and fine artist, an unusually accurate description of the way her disciplines continually feed into one another.
Her most recent cover, “Before the Plunge,” appeared on the magazine's August 24 & 31, 2026 issue, capturing a quiet early-morning moment beside a swimming pool. Earlier covers have explored family, fashion, spring, the sea and everyday social life, using the bold silhouettes and compressed narrative imagery that have become characteristic of her work.
Diana is also an author and children's-book illustrator. Her publishing work includes Olu & Greta, while her wider commercial practice has extended into collaborations with Comme des Garçons and H&M.
That movement between a magazine cover, a children's book, a textile and a gallery painting isn't a series of separate careers. It is part of the same practice: using images, objects and pattern to tell stories.
Diana's growing contemporary-art practice
The Armory Show follows a period of growing international exhibition activity. Recent projects include the solo exhibition Exercises of Liberation at kó in Lagos and presentations at Art SG, the Investec Cape Town Art Fair and ART X Lagos.
Her 2023 Villa Romana Prize resulted in a ten-month fellowship in Florence, and her research from the period has subsequently been published as Worlding with Many Hands.
The New York presentation therefore feels less like a move away from illustration than an expansion of the world Diana has already been constructing across different media.
As The New Yorker noted in an earlier conversation with Diana, even when she creates a single figure she imagines the story that brought that character onto the page. At The Armory Show, that instinct for storytelling is allowed to unfold across entire groups of paintings.
Where can you see Diana at The Armory Show?
The Armory Show 2026
Diana — presented by kó
Booth P50
Javits Center
429 11th Avenue, New York
24–27 September 2026
The public fair runs Friday through Sunday following the VIP preview on Thursday 24 September.
You can also explore more of Diana's work through her official website, where The Armory Show is listed among her 2026–27 exhibitions.
