Nike Centre for Arts & Culture

Artist and designer, Nike Davies Okundaye, loves Nigeria, her country. She describes the country as one with an ancient culture that thrives in modern cities, a world that swings with ease between talking drums and the Internet.

Nike Centre for Art and Culture is where training is offered free of charge to all Nigerians in various forms of arts; painting, batik, dance, study of sculpture, theatre, quilting and more. The centre was originally a safe haven for disadvantaged women and young adults, and has trained over 3000 Nigerians who are now earning a decent livings.

For more than 20 years, Nike has given workshops on traditional Nigerian textiles to audiences in America and Europe. She is known for her colourful batik and paintings that offer modernist gloss on traditional themes.

Brought up amidst the traditional weaving and dying vocation, Nike is widely practiced in her native village of Ogidi Kogi State, North Central Nigeria.



Nike is the Managing Director/CEO of Nike Center for Art and Culture, Osogbo. The center was established in 1983, by Nike solely from her earnings as an artist and without governmental assistance. Nike opened this center with 20 young girls who were marching the streets in Osogbo aimlessly and who had no hopes for the future. In their tender age, Nike withdrew these girls from the streets and provided them with free food, free materials and free accommodation at her residence at Osogbo and taught them how to use their hands to earn decent livings through the art. So far, over 3000 young Nigerians have been trained in the center and who are now earning their decent livings through art. Many African countries now send their students to study textile art at the center.

Her fame as an artist and teacher has taken her all over the globe. Not one to pass up an opportunity, she used her international success to launch a cultural revival, building art centers where young Nigerians master traditional arts and crafts.

Whether a specialist in the arts, an enthusiast of African arts or merely interested in a brief immersion in a new culture, Nike offers the opportunity to see Nigeria through fresh eyes.

The Nike Center for Art and Culture, Osogbo now admits undergraduate students from many universities in Nigeria for their industrial training programs in textile design. Over the years, this center also now admits students from all over Europe, Canada and the United States of America. International scholars and other researchers in traditional African art and culture also visit the center from time to time for their research works into Yoruba "Adire" fabric processing and African traditional dyeing methods.

Nike is also the Owner/Curator of the Nike Art Galleries at Lagos, Osogbo, Ogidi-Ijumu and Abuja. In 1996, Nike established a textile (Aso-Oke) weaving center at Ogidi-Ijumu near Kabba in Kogi State for the women of the village, employing and empowering more than 200 women in the weaving center. In June 2002, Nike established an Art and Culture research center at Piwoyi village, FCT Abuja with an art gallery and a textile museum, the first of its kind in Nigeria which will provide functional platform for research into Nigerian traditional textile industry in the Federal Capital Territory area of Abuja.


In furtherance of these noble endeavors, Nike is currently the managing director and founder of the following organizations in Nigeria; "Nike Art Productions Limited" which she incorporated in 1994, "Nike Art Gallery Limited" which she incorporated in 2007 and the "Nike Research Centre for Art and Culture Limited" which she incorporated in 2007. Also in 2007, Nike founded the "Nike Art and Culture Foundation" with some notable eminent Nigerians as trustees, with the main aims and objectives of fostering Nigerian cultural heritage.

The centre had the first of many international exhibitions in the 70s. It has had exhibitions and workshops in Nigeria, Europe, North America etc. The centre currently enrols students, who are at present making a living selling their works