Otobong Nkanga - Art For Tomorrow

Visual Artist

Otobong Nkanga’s work foregrounds the ecological themes of relationality and becoming through a distilled poetics of entanglement. Her multidisciplinary practice examines the complex social, political and material relationships between bodies, territories, minerals and the earth. Unsettling the divisions between minimal and conceptual or sensual and surreal approaches, the artist’s research-based practice constellates humans and landscapes, organic and nonorganic matter, Global North and Global South economies. Through drawing, installation, performance, photography, textiles and sculpture, Nkanga creates pathways translating the natural world – its plants, herbs, minerals and living organisms – into networked, aggregated situations evoking memory, labor, home, care, ownership, emotion, touch and smell.

Born in Kano, Nigeria in 1974, Nkanga lives and works in Antwerp, Belgium. She studied at the Obafemi Awolowo University in Ife-Ife, Nigeria and the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris and did her masters in the performing arts at DasArts, Academy of Theater and Dance in Amsterdam. She was artist in residence at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam (2002-2004), DAAD Berlin (2013-2014) and at the Martin Gropius-Bau in 2019.

Her most recent solo exhibitions include: Musée d’art Moderne de Paris (2025); Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas (2025); MoMA, New York City (2024); IVAM, Valencia, Spain (2023), Museum Sint-Janshospitaal, Bruges, Belgium (2022); Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria (2021); Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Turin, Italy (2021-2022); Villa Arson Nice, France (2021); Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Høvikodden, Norway (2020-2021); Gropius Bau, Berlin (2020); MIMA, Middlesbrough, England (2020); Tate St Ives, England (2019); Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, Cape Town, South Africa (2019); Ar/Ge Kunst, Bolzano, Italy (2018); MCA Chicago (2018); Kunsthal Aarhus, Denmark (2017); Nottingham Contemporary, England (2016); Beirut Art Center, Lebanon (2016); Tate Modern, London (2015); Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany (2015); Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, the Netherlands (2015); Portikus, Frankfurt (2015), M HKA Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp, Belgium (2015); and KADIST Art Foundation, Paris (2015).

She has participated in international group exhibitions at Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland (2024); Bourse de Commerce Pinault Collection, Paris (2024); Hayward Gallery, London (2023); Fondation Beyeler, Riehen, near Basel, Switzerland (2023); Museum of Contemporary Art, Busan, South Korea (2022); Scuola di San Pasquale, Venice (2022); Hessel Museum of Art, New York State (2022); 8th Triennial of Photography Hamburg (2022); Somerset House, London (2021); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, California (2021); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2020, 2016); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2020); Dhaka Art Summit, Bangladesh (2020); 58th Venice Biennale (2019); Sharjah Biennial 14, United Arab Emirates (2019); MAMAC, Nice, France (2018); Moscow Museum of Modern Art (2018); Documenta 14, Athens and Kassel (2017); Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, (2017); Pirelli Hangar Bicocca, Milan (2017); Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2016) and 13th Biennale de Lyon (2015). Between 2004 and 2007, she also participated in group shows at Johannesburg Art Gallery, South Africa; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Hayward Gallery, London; and Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf.

Nkanga was awarded a Special Mention at the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019 and won the 2017 Belgium Art Prize. Other notable awards include the Peter-Weiss-Preis, the Sharjah Biennial Prize and the inaugural Lise Wilhelmsen Art Award (all in 2019), the Flemish Cultural Award for Visual Arts – Ultima (2018) and the Yanghyun Prize (2015).