Otobong Nkanga was born on 1974 and is a Nigerian-born visual artist, tapestry maker and performance artist, based in Antwerp, Belgium.
13 Facts About Otobong Nkanga
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Otobong Nkanga's work has been featured in many institutions including the Tate Modern the KW Institute, the Stedelijk Museum and the biennale of Sharjah.
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Otobong Nkanga took part in the 20th Biennale of Sydney.
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Otobong Nkanga was born in Kano, Nigeria, in 1974 and spent the majority of her childhood in Lagos.
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Otobong Nkanga's mother died in a car accident just when she started her university studies.
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Otobong Nkanga then went on to get a master's degree in Performing Arts at Dasarts, Amsterdam, in the Netherlands in 2008.
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Otobong Nkanga uses many forms of media such as drawings, photographs, painting, textiles, videos, and sculptures, however she is mostly known for her installations.
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In 2007 to 2008, in response to the work Baggage by American artist Allan Kaprow, Otobong Nkanga has designed a performance for the Kunsthalle Bern.
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The initial work that was based on issues of movement of goods from one point of the planet to another, Otobong Nkanga introduces a post-colonial dimension.
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Art critic Philippe Pirotte wrote that Otobong Nkanga comes to create a kind of vehicle for the presentation and the transportation which does not define the use value in an era where everyone is obsessed with the transformation of natural tools resources which serve humanity.
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Otobong Nkanga's project, Contained Measures of Tangible Memories that started in 2010, from her first trip to the Morocco, she explores the practices of dyeing.
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Otobong Nkanga explained that the Kola tree is important for its culture and is a symbol of spirituality to its culture.
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Otobong Nkanga was part of the jury which selected Gaelle Choisne as winner of the Marcel Duchamp Prize in 2024.