Okundaye was born 23 May 1951 in Ogidi, Kogi State, in North-Central Nigeria, and was brought up amidst the Yoruba traditional weaving and dyeing as practiced in her hometown. Her parents and great grandmother were musicians and craftspeople, who specialized in the areas of cloth weaving, adire making, indigo dyeing and leather. She learned how to use the loom to...
Okundaye was born 23 May 1951 in Ogidi, Kogi State, in North-Central Nigeria, and was brought up amidst the Yoruba traditional weaving and dyeing as practiced in her hometown. Her parents and great grandmother were musicians and craftspeople, who specialized in the areas of cloth weaving, adire making, indigo dyeing and leather. She learned how to use the loom to produce cloth during the time she lived with her great grandmother Ibitola (Red Woman). She spent part of her early life in Osogbo, Western Nigeria, modern-day Osun State. Growing up in Osogbo, which is recognized as a major center for art and culture in Nigeria, young Okundaye was exposed to the indigo dyeing and adire production that dominated her informal training.
Over the past twenty years, Okundaye has conducted workshops on traditional Nigerian textiles for audiences in the United States and Europe. She had her first solo exhibition at the Goethe Institute, Lagos, in 1968. She is the founder and director of four art centers that offer free training to more than 150 young artists in visual, musical and performing arts, comprising more than 7,000 artworks.
Okundaye's adire and batik textiles use visual themes taken from Yoruba history and mythology, as well as visual themes inspired by her own life experiences and dreams. According to Kim Marie Vaz, folklore often intermingles with personal experiences to express disheartening subjects regarding female suffering. Folklore that Okundaye was exposed to through evening stories spoken by the village elder, addressing social issues centered on female suffrage, in which she uses folklore figures to express her concerns on female suffering through her batiks that portray the goddess Osun (i.e., "Mother of Africa") communicating on ideologies and social norms that place females in constrained positions.
HONOURS
Okundaye is the recipient of honors from numerous esteemed cultural institutions. She has served on the UNESCO Committee of the Intangible Nigerian Heritage Project. She has been honored as the CEPAN Foundation Art Icon of the year. Okundaye has given workshops and lectures at universities world over.
In 2024, She was given the U.S. Exchange Alumni Lifetime Achievement Award to recognize her significant contributions to the arts and longstanding cultural relationship between the U.S. and Nigeria.
Okundaye was honored, along with Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, by the U.S. government through the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and Senate, for their contributions to art in Nigeria and globally, at the unveiling of the African Cultural Festival 2025 held at the Pennsylvania State Capitol.
