Otobong Nkanga

Otobong Nkanga‘s drawings, installations, photographs, videos and sculptures variously examine ideas around land and the value connected to its resources. She often utilises body and voice in order to articulate her own reactions to existing structures and their implications. She finds inspiration for this in observing social and topographic changes in her surroundings and the influences that arise from these. As a human trace that testifies of ways of living and environmental issues, architecture and landscape act as a sounding board for narration and “the performative”.
In many of her works Nkanga reflects metonymically on the use and cultural value of natural resources, exploring how meaning and function are relative within cultures and revealing different roles and histories for the same products, particularly within the context of the artist’s autobiography and memories.