15 Facts About Okwui Okpokwasili

Okwui Okpokwasili is a Nigerian-American artist, actress, performer, choreographer, and writer.

Okwui Okpokwasili is especially interested in cultural and historical memory and how the Western imagination perceives African bodies.

Okwui Okpokwasili was born August 6,1972 in The Bronx, New York, daughter of Igbo Nigerian immigrants who moved to the United States to escape the Nigerian Civil War in the late 1960s.

Okwui Okpokwasili attended Yale University, where she met filmmaker Andrew Rossi, who made a documentary about her piece Bronx Gothic.

Okwui Okpokwasili has become a key figure in the New York experimental dance scene.

Okwui Okpokwasili is known for several one-woman performances and for her frequent collaborations with Ralph Lemon and Peter Born, her husband.

Okwui Okpokwasili is known for her role in the music video for the Jay-Z song "4:44", from the album of the same name.

Okwui Okpokwasili played the part of KK in Josephine Decker's 2018 film, Madeline's Madeline.

In 2023, Okwui Okpokwasili starred in The Exorcist: Believer alongside Leslie Odom Jr.

In 2024, Okwui Okpokwasili played Vertigo of the Salem's Seven in Agatha All Along.

Okwui Okpokwasili won a 2010 New York Dance Award and a 2009 Performance Bessie Award for Outstanding Production.

The film illuminates the process of creating the work; includes clips of Okwui Okpokwasili answering questions from the audience when she toured the piece, and candid discussions with her husband about race; and features her parents and their reaction to her art.

Okwui Okpokwasili has cited as a major influence the Nigerian novelist Amos Tutuola, who is known for incorporating elements of Yoruba folklore into his works.

The research Okwui Okpokwasili completed for Poor People's TV Room informed Sitting on a Man's Head, a work the artist presented at the 2018 Berlin Biennale.

Okwui Okpokwasili has received several Bessie Awards for her performances, including works she has written and developed herself.