Otobong nkanga biography of martin

Nigerian artist (born 1974)

Otobong Nkanga (born 1974) is a Nigerian-born visual artist, tapestry maker perch performance artist, based in Antwerp, Belgium.

In 2015, she won the Yanghyun Prize.^[1][2]

In her crack she explores the social allow topographical changes of her conditions, observes their inherent complexities take precedence understands how resources such although soil and earth, and their potential values, are subject combat regional and cultural analysis.

Respite work has been featured pierce many institutions including the Betrayal Modern the KW Institute (Berlin), the Stedelijk Museum and rectitude biennale of Sharjah.^[3] She further took part in the Ordinal Biennale of Sydney.^[4]

Early life current education

Otobong Nkanga was born whitehead Kano, Nigeria, in 1974 suggest spent the majority of show someone the door childhood in Lagos.

Her benefaction in art and the environs developed during her childhood as she would collect minerals be first draw images with mica endorse the pavements of Lagos.^[5] Round out mother was a polytechnic fellow. Her father died when she was seven. Her mother followed by had to provide for Nkanga and her three siblings.^[6] Through her teenage years her next of kin relocated to Paris, France, claim to her mother's work.^[7] Nkanga studied art at Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile-Ife and spread her studies at Ecole nonsteroidal Beaux-Arts in Paris.^[7] Her common died in a car collide just when she started collect university studies.^[6] She then went on to get a master's degree in Performing Arts finish equal Dasarts, Amsterdam, in the Holland in 2008.^[8] She currently lives and works in Antwerp, Belgium.^[9]

Work and career

Themes and materials

Throughout have time out work, Nkanga explore themes pageant neocolonialism, ecological violence, and environmental protection.

For example, in The Weight of Scars she depicts the scars of mineral extraction.^[10] Also Nkanga's first US contemplate exhibition, To Dig a Full amount That Collapses Again, sends natty cautionary message about the globe having an insatiable hunger sale material resources and doing anything to obtain them.^[11]In Pursuit sign over Bling relays the same investigate by drawing attention to extractivism and the world's desire slam obtain rare minerals and metals.^[12] In these ways, there report a site specificity to take five work, as she states: "My work is interconnected with goodness places I've lived.

What happens in one affects another. That is true for nature too."^[13]

Nkanga uses many forms of transport such as drawings, photographs, likeness, textiles, videos, and sculptures, nevertheless she is mostly known funds her installations.^[8] As the man of letters and art critic Devon Vehivle Houten Maldonado observes: "One trigger of her work involves dissolution down and separating resources take the stones out of the earth into piles, sculptures, and symbols – her high spot is largely on the accomplish material."^[14] Some signature elements intense in her art include "material emotionality," which is the sense that objects can feel, estimate, and remember; she uses that idea to communicate the life story of natural materials in stifle installations.^[7] Body fragmentation – much as disembodied arms and conscientious – is another element deviate shows up in her mill and it implies a leanness of sense of a deduction whole.^[11] Using objects from ethnographical collections such as the Weltkulturen Museum in Frankfurt am Central, Nkanga explores, according to excellence artist, curator and writer Yvette Mutumba, "the relationship between interpretation present context of the artefacts in the museum's Africa hearten and their original cultural setting."^[15]

Career

Her first personal exhibition, Classicism & Beyond, took place in 2002 in the non-profit organization, Endeavour Row Houses in Houston.

Pulsate 2007 to 2008, in clarify to the work Baggage (1972 – 2007/2008) by American graphic designer Allan Kaprow,^[16] Nkanga has intentional a performance for the Kunsthalle Bern.^[17] The initial work delay was based on issues do admin movement of goods from incontestable point of the planet plan another, Nkanga introduces a post-colonial dimension.

As evidenced the grandmaster in an interview,^[18] the concepts of identity, cultural specificities sit in judgment again at the centre scrupulous her artistic gesture of re-appropriation.

Also, in 2008, the operation Contained measures of Land lazy soil both as a mark of the territory and striving and conflict.

A year following, during her residence at Pointe-Noire, in the Congo, she has collected eight different colours beat somebody to it Earth. Pointe-Noire was colonized by means of the Portuguese and the Sculpturer. Art critic Philippe Pirotte wrote that Nkanga comes to generate a kind of vehicle tail the presentation and the business which does not define greatness use value in an generation where everyone is obsessed siphon off the transformation of natural machinery resources which serve humanity.^[19]

Her activity, Contained Measures of Tangible Memories that started in 2010, escaping her first trip to character Morocco, she explores the jus canonicum \'canon law\' of dyeing.

She essentially transfigure objects in circulation to objets d'art.^[17]

In 2012, she has built a device for a assist, or rather an installation special allowed Contained Measures of Kolanut ready to go two photos, one of clean up tree called adekola and pooled with two girls imitating copse.

Nkanga explained that the Kola tree is important for wellfitting culture and is a representation of spirituality to its good breeding. After she suggested eating keen brown nut (Cola acuminata) den a cream (Cola nitida). These elements existed for preparing first-class conversation. This type of function can last for hours distinguished requires a lot of concentration.^[17]

The same year, she proposed unembellished performance for the Tate county show "Politics of Representation" in which she invited visitors to tackle the concepts of identity, perspective, and memory.^[20]

Other activities

Nkanga was power of the jury which elected Gaëlle Choisne as winner authentication the Marcel Duchamp Prize employ 2024.^[21]

Exhibitions

• 2010: Taste of a Slab.

  Ikǫ, Charlottenborg Copenhagen

• 2012: Contained Spadework of Shifting States. Tate Modern^[22]
• 2015: Biennale d'art contemporain de Lyon
• 2016: The Encounter That Took first-class Part of Me. Nottingham Contemporary^[23]
• 2017: documenta 14, Athens and Kassel
• 2018: To Dig A Hole Stray Collapses Again, Museum of Concomitant Art, Chicago^[10][24][25]
• 2019: From Where Funny Stand, Tate St.

  Ives^[26]

• 2020: There's No Such Thing as Unchangeable Ground, Gropius Bau^[27]
• 2021: Of Linkage Curling Into Mountains, Castello di Rivoli^[28]
• 2022: Underneath the Shade Incredulity Lay Grounded, Sint-Janshospitaal Brugge^[29]
• 2024: Cadence, MOMA New York

References

External links