Meet Uju
Obianuju
Tóth
Founder of ARTOMYSTIC
Biologist by training, award-winning singer, author and sculptor. Also, the kind of woman who talks to the wood while she hammers it.
My songs, my book and my sculptures all ask the same questions. I also take ideas from nothing to a room full of people, with no team and no budget, and now I help founders and creative people see what connects their own work.
What I'm good at
Seeing the structure underneath things.
Hand me a body of work, a business, a decision or a habit, and the skeleton shows up first: what is holding it up, what keeps repeating and where it is quietly fighting itself. My eye goes straight to the beams.
People build projects, businesses and bodies of work over years, then reach a consequential decision and struggle to see the whole picture. As a result, they cut the wrong project, keep the wrong one or start again from zero, and the same pattern quietly follows them into the next thing.
My sculptures, my book and THE THINKING approach the same territory through different forms: making hidden structures, patterns and contradictions visible.
What I've built
I can take an idea from nothing to a room full of people.
Every project below started as a picture in my head and ended in public, with real people in the room. I did the concept, the planning, the production, the people and the audience myself, which is the same work I look at when I examine someone else's project.
Imagine
One clear idea, said in a sentence.
Structure
Plan, budget, dates, materials and the people needed.
Build
The long hours of production, done to a deadline.
Deliver
The audience gathered, the doors open, the result in public.
- The Architecture of Self-Betrayal · 2026Concept, design and production of five sculptures, 18 to 70 hours each by hand. I pitched the exhibition, built the audience in public and opened at Stex House, Budapest. Three pieces sold.
- Budapest concertsProgrammed and recorded the songs, hired, rehearsed and paid the band, secured the venue, booked the photographer and filled the room, with no manager and no budget.
- Sovereign Witch listening concert · 2025A fifteen-track self-produced album, launched at Turbina. Venue, guest list and audience of about seventy, organised alone.
- Teaching platform and online courseDesigned and published Clear Feedback for Global Teams: Mastering the SBI Model: learning goals, pathway, lessons and delivery, built with AI tools.
- English teaching · since 2017Private teaching from 2017, and remote corporate classes for professionals at international companies since 2022, with my own lesson design and materials.
- The Named Woman · 2026Written, edited and published as a memoir under ARTOMYSTIC Press. Over fifty copies sold.
- ARTOMYSTIC and THE THINKINGA research practice, its method and a paid examination service, designed and launched from scratch.
What connects it
Many forms, one set of questions.
Songs lived in one corner, a memoir in another, sculptures by the window and research on the kitchen table, so most people assumed the work was scattered across too many hobbies.
However, once everything was laid out together, the same few questions were running through every song, page and piece of wood:
Although the medium kept changing, the questions stayed the same, and recognising that thread is what gave birth to ARTOMYSTIC.
Where it started
I come from women who made things.
In Primary Two at St Paul's Anglican School in Kakuri, Kaduna, where my mother was the headmistress, a new teacher arrived one day with a bag of wood, tacks and red yarn. Because we were too young for nails, we pressed tacks into the wood and wound the yarn around them until a shape appeared, probably a bird in my case, and while the rest of the class chatted, the making swallowed me whole.
That absorption came from somewhere, since in my family making things was as ordinary as cooking.
Mamanuku, my grandmother
She wove raffia mats, and they were beautiful.
My mother
She made soap, ointments and candles and sewed beaded Igbo blouses in a style entirely her own, so original that local tailors copied her, although by the time they caught up she had already moved on to the next design.
The years my hands were put away
The jewellery in the shoe box.
After moving to Hungary, I made a collection of Ankara jewellery, photographed it at sunset and prepared to sell it. However, someone whose opinion mattered told me it didn't fit my music brand, because a serious artist supposedly needs one clear identity.
Instead of arguing, the jewellery went into a Michael Kors shoe box at the back of the wardrobe, and for years afterwards my life moved into my head: writing, teaching and building frameworks while my hands stayed still.
In December 2025, the old craft box finally came out and everything went onto the table, Ankara, wood, paint and wire, where it sat untouched for three days, because if those tools were coming back, it had to be serious this time.
On the fourth day, the first nail went into a circle of wood and became a prayer stick, the first version of Restart Spiral, a sculpture about a woman who is always moving and never arriving. When it was finished, it went onto my desk, and I cried.
People who meet me tend to decide I'm either a witch or completely unreachable, and since my album is called Sovereign Witch, arguing seems pointless.
The music
From Zinny to Uju.
Long before Budapest, my stage name was Zinny, a recording artist in Nigeria, and over the years the country, the bands and eventually the name all changed.
- 2012
The Way You Make Me Feel, released as Zinny, featuring Spotlyt.
- 2013
Most Promising Diva at the Abuja Music & Meritorious Awards, the same year as Runway Abuja.
- 2017
A move to Hungary, and performances with Zinny and the Juicy Magic Band and with Veracruz Band.
- 2019
Founded The Mind Revolution of Nigeria, a youth movement questioning old beliefs, and recorded Good Anger with rapper Bemshima.
- 2020
Best English Lyric at the AfriMusic Song Contest for Little Girls Grow.
- 2023
From Zinny back to my own name, Uju.
- 2025
Sovereign Witch, a fifteen-track self-produced album, launched at Turbina to an audience of about seventy.
- 2026
The VEILWALKER project, beginning with Bloodline Code and followed by Ritual Cry in October.
More than ten official music videos and performances across Nigeria and Hungary.
The work today
A book and five sculptures.
The Named Woman
A memoir, published in January 2026, about people-pleasing, performing yourself and how women learn to hand their authority away, told across Nigeria and Hungary.
See the book →
The Architecture of Self-Betrayal
My first solo exhibition, in Budapest in September 2026, where five sculptures in birch plywood, rope, brass and found materials each gave one habit of self-betrayal a physical body.
See the exhibition →THE THINKING · First case, shared with permission
Daniel, musician, three years of silence.
He's in the studio recording now. Book a €100 call →
What people say
“She is very good at bringing out the hidden layer of a person's work or life, and she does it with so much confidence and emotional intelligence.”
“A masterful blend of dark and atmospheric sounds and deep storytelling.”
Why ARTOMYSTIC exists
Your work probably has a structure you haven't seen yet.
Many creative people have years of work behind them, yet struggle to say what connects it, because from the inside it is very hard to read the label on your own jar.
Having lived inside that jar for years, finding the thread in my own work is how ARTOMYSTIC began: an artist's research practice where art, writing, music and investigation share one table.
THE THINKING applies the same process to your work, identifying the recurring ideas, the hidden links, the qualities that are distinctly yours and the parts that contradict each other.
You receive a clear view of what you have already built, so the next decision is yours to make with open eyes.
See THE THINKING Book a €100 callThe receipts
The short version.
ARTOMYSTIC
Sometimes the next step is understanding what you've already made.
Explore the sculptures, read the book, or bring your own work to THE THINKING.
See the art See THE THINKING Book a €100 call