Onyedika Chuke. Image courtesy of Storage.
Vajra Kingsley & Onyedika Chuke
Elephant Magazine
May 16, 2025
As an artist, gallerist, and art advisor, Onyedika Chuke approaches his work with a blue-collar ethos, an unwavering commitment to craft, and a keen awareness of the risks inherent in building something from the ground up. I met him on the fourth floor of Tribeca’s 52 Walker building as light streamed through the rounded windows of his gallery, Storage.
Vajra Kingsley: What is the aftertaste you want people to have when they read this interview? Is it your overall vision? Is it why you’ve decided to become a gallerist?
Onyedika Chuke: The biggest fear that I have in life is to be misunderstood, to be stereotyped, to be marked as something I’m not, so I want people to walk away feeling that they know what I am. Who I am is an artist. I’m a dealer, I’m an educator, I’m an entrepreneur, and I approach all of these things from a very blue-collar mindset and a sensitive place of knowing that I don’t know everything. I don’t want to be marked as an artist that just happened to, on a whim, open the gallery. My journey working in galleries started two decades ago.
It’s important to really understand the methodology of why this gallery runs the way it does, and what is at the centre of my life ethos. Why would someone take this amount of risk on a daily basis in order to build something? What is the entrepreneurial aspect of my makeup that puts me forever in harm’s way to keep doing this? This is the worst economy that we’ve had in a long time. This is a very expensive endeavour. There are a lot of people that I’m responsible for, and the backdrop is a history that has not been kind to people who are not moneyed in this business, not to get into the whole gendered and racial dynamics of things. We could have this conversation without that. I think whatever’s implied people will pick up on it. People know themselves, they know their neighbours, they know the government and the way things actually play out.