Artist

Otobong Nkanga

Born in Kano, 1974 and lives in Antwerp, Belgium

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.

Exhibitions
Exhibitions
KUB in Venice. Otobong Nkanga & Anna Boghiguian
For the first weeks of the Biennale di Venezia 2022, the historic Scuola di San Pasquale becomes an outpost of Kunsthaus Bregenz.
20 Apr 2022 - 04 Jul 2022
Venice
Exhibitions
Otobong Nkanga. Of Cords Curling around Mountains
Specially conceived for the galleries on the third floor of the Castello, the exhibition consists of a large site-specific project.
25 Sep 2021 - 30 Jan 2022
Castello di Rivoli
Turin
Exhibitions
Protext!
The group exhibition investigates fabric as an artistic medium in the practice of young renown artists
24 Oct 2020 - 14 Feb 2021
Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci
Prato
Exhibitions
Otobong Nkanga: From Where I Stand
The first museum survey by the Nigerian artist in the UK, collecting pieces about the extraction and transformation of natural resources
14 Mar 2020 - 28 Jun 2020
Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art
United Kingdom
Exhibitions
Our World is Burning
A group exhibition on the climate consequences of fire on our planet from a singular perspective.
21 Feb 2020 - 17 May 2020
Palais de Tokyo
Paris
Exhibitions
Take Me I’m Yours
After having become, for its reopening in October 2014, Paul McCarthy’s Chocolate Factory, then...
16 Sep 2015 - 08 Nov 2015
Monnaie de Paris
Exhibitions
Take Me (I’m Yours) at Pirelli HangarBicocca
Curated by Roberta Tenconi in collaboration with Christian Boltanski, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Chiara...
07 Nov 2017 - 21 Jan 2018
Pirelli HangarBicocca
Milan
Exhibitions
Open at Night – Festival of Lights
The first edition of the Festival of Lights called Open at Night was born by and idea of Muriel Mayette-Holtz...
16 Dec 2017 - 28 Jan 2018
Villa Medici
Rome
Exhibitions
Homeless Souls
Gathering together a dozen artistic voices from countries around the world for a conversation about exile...
27 Jun 2019 - 22 Sep 2019
Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark
Denmark
Art Spaces
In Situ – Fabienne Leclerc
Galleries in Paris
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