Rouse Visiting Artist Lecture: Otobong Nkanga

Photo documentation of a sculpture by Otobong Nkanga, Solid Maneuvers, 2015

Solid Maneuvers, 2015. Various metals, forex, acrylic, tar, salt, make-up, vermiculite. Dimensions variable. Photographer: Helena Schlichting

The GSD welcomes Otobong Nkanga for a Rouse Visiting Artist Lecture and as the International Women’s Day 2018 keynote speaker.

Otobong Nkanga’s multidisciplinary practice spans across drawing, photography, installation, video and performance, and focuses on the interrelation between environment, architecture and history. Her work weave together concerns about land, natural resources, architecture, the value connected to them and the dynamic status of remembrance. These predominantly political topics are incorporated into poetic combinations of autobiographic and collective narratives, memories and concepts. Nkanga will be discussing past works and projects that have led up to her more recent project Carved to Flow that was first presented at Documenta 14 in Athens, Greece and Kassel, Germany.

Otobong Nkanga (NG/BE) was born in 1974 in Kano, Nigeria. She lives and works in Antwerp, Belgium. Nkanga began her art studies at the Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile-Ife, Nigeria, and later continued in Paris at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts. She was an artist-in-residence at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam from 2002 – 2004. In 2008 she obtained her Masters in the Performing Arts at Dasarts, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. In 2013 – 2014, she was a guest of the DAAD Berliner Künstlerprogramm – Artists-in-Berlin Program. Nkanga has had solo exhibitions at Tate Modern, London (2017); Kunshal Aarhus, Aarhus (2017); Nottingham Contemporary (2016); Berkeley Art Museum, BAMPFA, California (2016); M HKA in Antwerp (2015); Portikus in Frankfurt (2015). In 2016, she also had major international projects in Shanghai and Beirut (Landversation). She has exhibited in several international exhibitions, including Documenta14 in Athens and Kassel (2017); 20th Biennale of Sydney (2016); 13th Biennale de Lyon (2015); 31st São Paulo Biennial (2014); the 8th Berlin Biennale (2014) and the Sharjah Biennial 11 (2013). She was the winner of the Yanghyun Prize in 2015 and the Belgian Art Prize in 2017. Her first US survey exhibition will open in March 2018 at the MCA, Chicago.

Anyone requiring accessibility accommodations should contact the Public Programs Office at (617) 496-2414 or [email protected].

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