Onyedika Chuke, the founder and director of Storage in Tribeca, New York. Photography by Emiliano Granado.
Jennifer Wilson on Storage
The New York Times
September 26, 2023
The limits of what commercial spaces were willing to take on was something that inspired the Nigerian-born artist Onyedika Chuke to also become a dealer. He is now the proprietor of Storage gallery in TriBeCa. Chuke started his career as a sculptor, he tells me, but found he kept running into the same problem. “I wasn’t making racially narrative sculpture.” Chuke, who arrived in the United States at 9, says, “I didn’t know I was Black until I came here.” He founded Storage in 2020 in the basement of a Chinatown restaurant. Though Storage is a commercial gallery, Chuke is attracted to art that is difficult to sell, for instance large sculptures by emerging artists or work that represents a shift in an established artist’s career. The first Storage show contained new works by Emory Douglas, the former minister of culture for the Black Panther Party, and paintings by Rick Lowe, better known for working with artists and nonprofit organizations to rehab dilapidated shotgun houses in Houston’s Third Ward. Chuke aspires to give artists the kind of creative freedom he lacked when he was up and coming. This is something bigger commercial galleries tend to shy away from, preferring that artists stick to their brand. “People want ketchup to always be red,” as he explains. – Jennifer Wilson